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ASEG news - Issue 24, 30th March 2020

Dear Members,

In today's news you'll find information on:

Covid-19
SEG virtual presentations
South Australia Science Excellence Awards
A new height for Mt. Everest
News from the states
Upcoming events (National and International)
The latest in Exploration Geophysics
What's new in Preview?
Member Spotlight: Dr Kate Robertson
Follow us on social media
Thanks to our corporate members

Don't forget to follow our social media accounts, for more regular updates on upcoming events and geoscience articles of interest.

Covid-19

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and beyond is evolving rapidly. The latest recommendations from Government Chief Medical Officers and the latest travel and community contact restrictions and guidance that have been announced in recent days by the Prime Minister require our ASEG Federal and State leadership to act with an abundance of caution and care for our Members and each other.

The ASEG Federal Executive will now host AGM 2020 on 7 April as an online meeting using the Zoom videoconferencing platform. Our Executive sees this as an opportunity in our 50th year to open the Annual General Meeting to a wider group of our Membership.

In order to participate in the AGM 2020 Zoom teleconference you should email the ASEG Secretariat (secretary@aseg.org.au) by no later than 2 April, requesting as a financial member of the ASEG to pre-register for the meeting.

The ASEG Secretariat will then email further details to you on the Zoom teleconference and the unique Zoom meeting code before the meeting.

The business of the Annual General Meeting will be:

  • To confirm the minutes of the last preceding general meeting;
  • To receive from the Federal Executive reports on the activities of the Society during the last preceding financial year;
  • To receive and consider the financial accounts and audit reports that are required to be submitted to Members pursuant to the Constitution and to law;
  • To consider and if agreed approve any changes to the ASEG Constitution;
  • To report the ballot results for the election of the new office holders for the Federal Executive;
  • To confirm the appointment of auditors for 2020.

Ted Tyne

ASEG President


SEG virtual presentations

The SEG are offering a number of virtual presentations, visit the links to register in advance. These are streamed live and will have a Q&A session at the end.

Lecturer Region Date of Presentation 1 Date of Presentation 2 Registration Link
Xinming Wu South & East Asia HL 14 Apr 20 12pm-1pm AEST 16 Apr 20 1:30 pm-2:30 pm AEST Deep learning for seismic interpretation
Johan Robertsson Europe HL 21 April 2020
12 to 1 AM AEST
6 May 2020
12 to 1 AM AEST
Generalized sampling and gradiometry: Changing the rules of the information game
Estella Atekwana Near Surface Global Lecturer 1 May 20
1am-2am AEST
22 Sep 20
6 am AEST
Biogeophysics: Exploring Earth's subsurface biosphere using geophysical approaches
Sergey Fomel 1Q-2Q DL 13 May 20
2am-3am AEST
TBD Automating seismic data analysis and interpretation

South Australia Science Excellence Awards

The SA Science Excellence and Innovation Awards showcases the critical importance of science, research and innovation to the development of industry and society as a whole.

The Awards provide a remarkable opportunity to recognise the work of inspiring Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) leaders and teams working in research and education institutions, schools, industry and the community.

The Awards are a significant occasion in South Australia's science calendar and are recognised as the premier science showcase event highlighting the diversity of scientific endeavour and research in this State.

The South Australian Scientist of the Year and the South Australian Innovator of the year will receive a prize to the value of $25,000.

The winners of the remaining categories will receive a prize to the value of $10,000 to use towards their career development.

All winners receive a trophy designed and produced by the Jam Factory and recognised as ambassadors of science at the state level.

Nominations close 24th April 2020. More details here.


A new height for Mt. Everest

As a result of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal on 25 April, 2015, Mt Everest, or Sagamartha as it is known in Nepal, may have lost a few centimeters of its 8,848 m height. It may have subsided with the release of a build-up of stress along the fault line where the India Plate is slowly diving below the Eurasian plate.

The Director General of the Survey Department of Nepal has mounted a team of 80 geologists, geophysicists and mountaineers to find out. The project is called "The National Initiative on Measurement of Height of Sagamartha" and apart from traditional trigonometric levelling and satellite positioning, it involves some geophysics. At first, Ground Probing Radar was used at the summit on 22 May 2019 to measure the depth of solid rock beneath the snow. Following, that a gravity meter survey was conducted to define the local geoid around the Everest region. US$200,000 of the total project's US$1.3 million was allocated for the latter, with the gravimeter brought in from Canada. 298 stations were completed.

With the data collection part of the initiative finished last December and after months of data crunching, Nepal hopes to release the result before the end of this year.

More information and progress can be found at: dos.gov.np.

The writer was alerted to this news first by an article in The Explorers Journal, v. 97, (4), 10-11.

Roger Henderson

rogah@tpg.com.au


Branch upcoming events

Details about ASEG events can be found on the ASEG website.

Branch Date Presenter Title Venue
ACT TBA ACT AGM AGM Virtual
Federal 7-4-2020 Virtual Federal AGM
NSW 15-07-2020
5pm
Dinner
NSW 19-08-2020 Bob Musgrave
(NSW GS)
99 York Street

Save the date: Dave Monk's DISC 2020: Designing and acquiring seismic surveys in light of today's technology

More details to come. In the meantime, here is a link to a Podcast episode of SEG's Seismic Soundoff with Dr Dave Monk.

Location Date
ACT 30-Jul
TAS 11-Aug
QLD 28-Jul
SA 6-Aug
WA 13-Aug
VIC 4-Aug

For a more complete calendar of events see Preview

Date Event
6-9 April 2020 Saint Petersburg 2020 - Geosciences: Converting Knowledge into Resources, St Petersburg, Russia
CANCELLED European Geosciences Union 2020, Vienna, Austria
POSTPONED
8-11 December 2020
82nd EAGE Annual Conference and Exhibition, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
POSTPONED
20-21 July 2021
6th International Archean Symposium Perth, Western Australia
POSTPONED
23 July 2021
Target 2020 Perth, Western Australia


Hi All,

Issue 1 is out and I trust you are all having a thorough read of what is the latest with AEM. Issues 2 and 3 have been finalised and will be coming out soon. Glimpses of what is to come can be seen with the following couple of papers ....enjoy!!

A comparison of two reflectivity parametrizations in acoustic least-squares reverse time migration, Yongming Lu & Qiancheng Li.

and

Imaging subsurface resistivity structure from airborne electromagnetic induction data using deep neural network, Kyubo Noh, Daeung Yoon & Joongmoo Byun.

ASEG members can access Exploration Geophysics articles free of charge by logging into the ASEG website and navigating to Professional > Publications > Exploration Geophysics.

Enjoy your reading.

Cheers

Mark

Dr Mark Lackie

Exploration Geophysics Editor

Mark.Lackie@mq.edu.au


A reminder that the February issue of Preview is available online

Preview is marking the ASEG's golden anniversary year by asking the current ASEG President, and current and past Editors of Exploration Geophysics, to nominate their "best of" papers published in the ASEG Bulletin or its successor, Exploration Geophysics, in the last 50 years. Ted Tyne's choice appears in the February issue and Don Emerson's choice will appear in the April issue.

The April issue will be available online in mid-April.

Proposed contributions for future issues can be submitted by email to the editor at previeweditor@aseg.org.au

Lisa Worrall

Preview Editor

PreviewEditor@aseg.org.au


This month we get to know Dr Kate Robertson.

 

  1. What is your current role?
  2. I am a Senior Geophysicist in the Lithospheric Architecture team at the Geological Survey of South Australia, Department for Energy and Mining. My job involves developing models to help understand the deep signatures of mineral systems, usually using the technique of magnetotellurics.

  3. Where was your best sunrise/sunset location?
  4. On top of a hill at Innamincka during an AusLAMP field trip in summer.

  5. What are you reading at the moment?
  6. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I was inspired to buy a bunch of books set in NYC whilst over there recently. It's a pretty funny book!

  7. What made you decide to be a geophysicist?
  8. Like many others, I kind of fell into it! I thought about enrolling in Bachelor of Science (biomedical science). Thankfully I didn't as it turned out biology was not for me. It wasn't until third year where I realised that geophysics was the perfect combination of geology and physics.

  9. What's one thing you wish someone had told you when you were at university?
  10. Bad habits are hard to break.. Make the good habits you want to keep early. And be organised!

  11. Your funniest or worst field memory?
  12. It would be a tie between getting bogged and having the dog fence patrol team bail us out, or when there were some 'roo shooters 'spotlighting' but we were reasonably sure we were not going to survive the night.

  13. What do you do in your spare time?
  14. I like to run, particularly on trails and do yoga.



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Corporate

 

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