National

Titles &  Presenters:

Enhancing statewide geophysics with high resolution company data - Dr Sam Matthews (GSNSW)

Proposed NSW geophysical acquisition 2021-2022 - Astrid Carlton (GSNSW)

Date & Time: Wednesday 20th October 2021, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm AEDT

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fWZnFRp1Q2q9wOapDGGHkA

Overviews:

Sam’s talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the creation of enhanced statewide geophysical merges incorporating high resolution company data. Following the QA/QC and metadata harvest from decades of legacy geophysics data, a specially created algorithm is applied to provide a quantitative aid in survey selection for inclusion in the merges. A small data workshop is included which highlights how all open-file geophysical data in NSW can be accessed for free through our online portal MinView.

Astrid’s talk will detail the expansive array of regional geophysics occurring throughout NSW from 2021 and into the future. The recent completion of the Cobar AEM and AMR surveys, as well as the Mundi AEM survey are only the tip of the iceberg in NSW. A wealth of regional geophysical surveys spanning a wide range of techniques are also in the works and promise exciting data.

ASEG Queensland Branch October Technical Talk

Presenter: Randall Taylor - Taylor Exploration Consulting, Principal Consultant.

Title: The OZ Min Explorer Challenge 2019: When petroleum explorers go searching for minerals.

In-person Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/randall-taylor-when-petroleum-explorers-go-searching-for-minerals-tickets-175168131597

Online registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vsI7VuJhRieKY6lTBu_nBw

Synopsis:

In 2019 OZ Minerals released more than 2TB of company data challenging teams from around the world to compete for $1M in prize money by predicting mineralisation locations in the Mount Woods area of the Gawler Craton. The area is best known for the Iron-Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) Prominent Hill deposit. Three former colleagues, Randall Taylor, Karen Aurisch and Bronwyn Davies with many years of combined petroleum exploration experience, but relatively little direct experience of mineral exploration, joined forces to analyse the data and submit an entry. This talk will present their methodology and results and compare it to the brief public disclosure of the winning entry.

Also on Thursday the 14th of October there is a combined Industry, Society, Early Career and Student Networking function held at the Fox Hotel. The flyer with specific details is below and registration is through the AIG website

Topic: Developing a Facies Architectural Outcrop Analog for Kuwait Formation at Jal Az-Zor Escarpment to understand Stratigraphic Controls on Heavy Oil Production Northern Kuwait

Date & Time: Sep 28, 2021 06:30 PM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Presenter:  Salah El-Ekhfifi,exploration geologist,NOC,Libya and  Aimen Amer

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pfNYT0SDTciQCTdFgAwKAQ

Description:

The Goal of this work is to develop an outcrop analog that can explain subsurface reservoir architecture.

This will be established through two methods:

1) conventional facies modeling and

2)forward stratigraphic modeling.

By applying these two methodologies, we will reinterpret an enigmatic elongated geobody in the subsurface and explain, how such feature is an excellent stratigraphic trap

Virtual social event

Please join us for a virtual social event on Thursday 23rd September at 7 pm AEST.

Please register in advance for free via Zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrd-CtrDosGtd5Rt0r_0RA1uNM-ezzN-_-

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

I hope to see you on Thursday night, and don't forget to wear something from 'where you would rather be,' and bring along your best/funniest/worst fieldwork stories to share with the group (if you want to), and your favourite drink and snacks.

We will have prizes on offer- you have to be in it to win it!

Let's all get together for a chance to have some fun, and to make lockdown a little less bleak for the east-coasters who might be getting cabin fever.

ASEG Honours and Awards Ceremony

It is also with great delight and excitement that myself, and Honours and Awards Chair Andrew Mutton, invite you to the ASEG Honours and Awards Ceremony that is open to everyone (not just conference attendees). This will be held during the lunch break on the first day of the conference talks (Wednesday 15th September) at 12 pm AEST. I cannot wait to share with you all the extremely deserving recipients of these awards and hope that you will join me online through Zoom to celebrate these outstanding achievements- click here to register.

Title: Preconditioned Compressive Sensing for Wavefield Reconstruction, Applications to tomography, Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition and Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Presenter: Jack Muir

Date/Time: Sep 2, 2021 1300 (AEST)

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Sr40IBw9SmiEnyMh5dOY4w

Abstract: The proliferation of large seismic arrays have opened many new avenues of geophysical research; however most techniques still fundamentally treat regional and global scale seismic networks as a collection of individual time series rather than as a single unified data product. Wavefield reconstruction allows us to turn a collection of individual records into a single structured form that treats the seismic wavefield as a coherent 3D or 4D entity. We propose a split processing scheme based on a wavelet transform in time and Laplacian preconditioned curvelet based compressive sensing in space to create a sparse representation of the continuous seismic wavefield with smooth second order derivatives. Using this representation, we will illustrate three applications that require accurate access to the full wavefield including spatial gradients - 

Bio: Jack Muir

Jack is a 6th year graduate student in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology Seismological Laboratory (Caltech Seismolab) –- he will take up a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Oxford University Department of Earth Sciences in late 2021 / early 2022, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Australian National University. He is passionate about inverse problems — some of the projects he is working on now are: imaging the Earth from near surface to the core; improving data captured at seismic arrays; and answering difficult questions about historical data sets.

Title: Application of Multi-Scale Magnetotelluric Data to Mineral Exploration: An Example from the East Tennant Region, Northern Australia

Presenter: Wenping Jiang, Geoscience Australia

When: 12th August,2021 at 11am AEST

Registation: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gKKtAD8MRwaRCNUp-DNwNA

Abstract: 

The footprint of a mineral system is potentially detectable at a range of scales and lithospheric depths. Magnetotellurics is one of few techniques that can provide multi-scale datasets to image and understand mineral systems. We have used long-period data from the Australian Lithospheric Architecture Magnetotelluric Project (AusLAMP) as a first-order reconnaissance survey to resolve large-scale lithospheric architecture for mapping areas of mineral potential in northern Australia. The 3D resistivity model reveals a broad conductivity anomaly in the lower crust and upper mantle to the east of Tennant Creek, representing a potential fertile source region. Results from a higher-resolution infill magnetotelluric survey reveal a favourable crustal architecture linking the lower, fertile source regions with potential depositional sites in the upper crust. This observation strongly suggests that the deep-penetrating major faults potentially acted as pathways for transporting metalliferous fluids to the upper crust where they could form mineral deposits. This result and its integration with other geophysical and geochronological datasets suggest high prospectivity for major mineral deposits in the vicinity of these major faults. In addition to these insights, interpretation of high-frequency magnetotelluric data helps to characterise cover and assist with selecting targets for stratigraphic drilling which, in turn, can validate the models and improve our understanding of basement geology, cover sequences and mineral potential.

This study demonstrates that integration of geophysical data from multi-scale surveys is an effective approach to scale reduction during mineral exploration in covered terranes.

Biography: Dr Wenping Jiang joined Geoscience Australia in 2012 after completing a PhD degree from the University of Sydney. Since Feb 2016, she has worked as a senior geophysicist in the Mineral Systems Branch, delivering precompetitive data and information to improve the understanding of mineral resource prospectivity. Her professional focus is mainly on Magnetotelluric data processing, modelling and interpretation.  

Title: Managing Through (constant) Change And Uncertainty -  The Key Dilemmas Facing Resources Industry Personnel

Presenter: Michelle Henderson

Date: Tuesday  8th June

Time: 16:00 AEST  

Location: Joint Zoom virtual + physical presentation at Geoscience Australia

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yNHpLyXNTOOXe5Qx4FsGSA

Abstract:

The cyclical nature of the resources industry creates very specific challenges across investment through to people management.  Faced with constant ‘instability’, often supply-limited expertise and the uncertainty over discovery, how do we hold on to our people, maintain their enthusiasm and continue to lead success?

As a professional coach across government and scientific agencies, Michelle brings extensive experience to the ‘problem’ and solution.  Her empathetic and pragmatic approach empowers professionals to not only manage change, but to enthusiastically grasp the opportunities it brings. 

Bio:

Michelle Henderson is a professional consultant and coach. She has been consulting to government and scientific agencies for the last six years. Her specialties include executive leadership, change and working with governments.

As a consultant Michelle combines her passion for leadership and innovation. She works with senior leaders to help them manage their teams, and themselves, in constantly changing environments. Her empathetic and pragmatic approach empowers professionals to not only manage change, but to actively seek opportunities to make positive change happen.

Prior to consulting, Michelle worked for 23 years at executive and senior executive levels in the areas of industry, innovation and science policy. Michelle has a deep understanding of Australia’s innovation system and the important role science discovery, research and commercialisation play in knowledge and wealth creation for Australia.

Michelle has postgraduate qualifications in Management (industry strategy) and vocational qualifications in training and development.  She is a level 1 accredited coach.

Title: Shallow mantle convection beneath West Africa and source to sink at continental margins: A novel approach to reservoir prediction in offshore deep-water settings

Presenter: Dr Bhavik Harish Lodhia (UNSW)

Abstract:

Deep-water settings are prevalent in many of the world’s frontier basins. To better focus exploration spend in today’s challenging environment and predict reservoirs, a novel approach to close the loop between onshore denudation and offshore sediment deposition is required. Sedimentary flux measurements, regional subsidence patterns, tomographic models and simple isostatic calculations are combined to constrain the history of offshore solid sedimentary flux and sub-plate support of the Mauritanian Basin. We combine seismic reflection and well data along the West African margin with shear wave tomography and the uplift and magmatic history of the Cape Verde Rise to constrain thermal, spatial and temporal scales of upper mantle convection. Predictions of solid sedimentary flux to the Mauritanian Basin calculated by inversion of continental drainage are compared to observations in the Chinguetti field of the Mauritanian Basin.

Bio: Bhavik moved to Australia from the United Kingdom earlier this year and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Energy Technology and Geophysics at UNSW. Bhavik graduated with a PhD in Geology and Geophysics at Imperial College London in 2019 and completed a masters/bachelors degree in Earth Sciences at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford in 2014. His work has focused on basin dynamics, geodynamics, sediment source to sink and petroleum systems modelling.

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-_AXVmqGT5GGGUrJw-VODA

Attend in-person

Time:                    5:30 for 6pm start

Address:              Level 2, Club York (99 York St, Sydney. Room 'York 2')

Meeting registration:      https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2V6JM9F by Sunday 18th April - due to COVID restrictions we require a registration for in-person meetings. If you have trouble registering please email nswsecretary@aseg.org.au 

Title: Learning to learn about the earth, using Bayesian inference

Presenter: Anandaroop Ray (Geoscience Australia)

Abstract: To understand earth processes, geoscientists infer subsurface earth properties such as electromagnetic resistivity or seismic velocity from surface observations such as magnetotelluric data or seismograms. These properties are used to populate an earth model vector, and the spatial variation of properties sheds light on the underlying earth structure and phenomena, from groundwater aquifers to plate tectonics. I will show that in order to make accurate inferences about earth properties, inferences can first be made about the underlying length scales of these properties. From a mathematical point of view, the length scales can be conveniently thought of as “properties” of earth properties. This can be treated in an “infer to infer” paradigm analogous to the “learning to learn” paradigm which is now commonplace in the machine learning literature. A non-stationary trans-dimensional Gaussian Process (TDGP) is used to parameterise earth properties, and a multi-channel stationary TDGP is used to parameterise the length scales. Using non-stationary kernels, i.e., kernels with spatially variable length scales, earth models with sharp discontinuities can also be represented within this framework. As GPs are multi-dimensional interpolators, the same theory and computer code can be used to solve geophysical problems in 1D, 2D and 3D. This is demonstrated through a combination of 1D and 2D non-linear regression examples and a controlled source electromagnetic field example.

Biography: Anandaroop Ray (“Anand”) started his career as a non-seismic geophysicist with Shell Exploration and Production in 2007. In 2010 he joined the PhD programme in marine electromagnetics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. In 2014 he completed his thesis focusing on uncertainty estimation in electromagnetic inversion for marine hydrocarbon exploration. From 2012-19, he worked for Chevron R&D on various problems – controlled source electromagnetics (CSEM), seismic full waveform inversion (FWI), reservoir properties from seismic (RPFS), airborne electromagnetics (AEM), statistical hydrocarbon exploration lookback analyses, and the role of machine learning in geophysics. The question most asked through his work is “how credibly can we interpret our inversion model(s),” the answering of which often requires the use of high-performance computing (HPC) techniques. He currently co-advises a PhD student at Columbia University on Bayesian geophysical inversion and has been active in convening and organizing the Uncertainty in Geophysical Inversion session at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. In March 2019 he joined the Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division at Geoscience Australia, where he continues to work on inverse uncertainty, model representation and geostatistics.

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_j_B7TWtMQvOSxy9zTLj5Iw