A large open pit mine.
Discovering Australia's mineral resources
The Minerals Down Under Flagship is working with industry and research partners in the Australian innovation system to help address Australia’s key national challenges and opportunities in the minerals domain. One area of focus for the flagship’s research is discovering Australia’s mineral resources.
- 20 April 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011
Overview
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Background
For almost 50 years, Australia's international competitive advantage for investment in the minerals industry has been based on huge, high-quality resources discovered in the 1960s and 1970s.
As a result, the mineral industry has grown to the point where it comprises 8.9 per cent of Australia's Gross Domestic Product and generates 50 per cent of Australia's total exports, estimated to be A$112 billion in 2007-08.
Many of the deposits that underpin this success are now depleting or experiencing declining grades.
At the same time, Australia's share of global mineral exploration spending has reduced from 20 per cent in 1996 to 13 per cent in 2009 (up from 11.9 per cent in 2007).
The long term future of the sector is clearly dependent on the continuing discovery of new ore deposits.
It is anticipated that the work of the Minerals Down Under Flagship will facilitate the discovery of A$250 billion of new mineral resources in Australia by 2030.
Research for industry
The Minerals Down Under Flagship works with Australian mineral explorers and government agencies to increase the continent's prospectivity and hence exploration investment in Australia relative to the rest of the world.
The flagship's Discovering Australia's Mineral Resources theme, provides an integrated research and development program that focuses on the unique challenges of the Australian landscape and its geological endowment and architecture to increase exploration success and reduce the significant risks and costs associated with mineral exploration.
The future of exploration
Australia has a unique set of technical challenges hindering exploration success, most notably extensive weathering, widespread cover and a common perception of exploration maturity.
The flagship's research program targets these challenges by developing technologies for exploration that provide:
- a collaborative national geoscience spatial data infrastructure system for information exchange across industry and government to deliver global leadership in pre-competitive geoscience data, attracting exploration investment and improving exploration outcomes
- platform technologies for reliable three-dimensional (3D) geological models that support fully coupled predictive modelling to deliver reliable target generation at depth and under cover, based on predictive 3D and four-dimensional (4D) process models
- new exploration technologies focused on Australian challenges of depth, cover and regolith to unlock new search terrains for exploration and reduce costs while increasing efficiency
- scale integrated mineral system models for effective target generation to deliver more effective exploration, reduced exploration cost and enable exploration of new Australian terrains.
Through the integration of these technologies, the flagship will allow fully integrated datasets to deliver well constrained 3D visualisations and interpretations of the earth's crust to drive exploration and increase our understanding of how mineral systems lead to giant ore bodies.
This will lead to discovery in Australia by attracting investment, improving target selection, reducing exploration cost and improving success rates.
In addition, these tools will unlock new search areas through increasingly deep discoveries and new greenfields discoveries.
There are five areas of research contributing towards the research theme, Discovering Australia's Mineral Resources. These include:
- National geoscience data infrastructure
- 3D to 4D mapping and modelling platforms
- New detection tools
- Mineral systems and targeting
- Education training, technology transfer and collaboration.
Read more about them in the following pages.
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Fast facts
- The mineral industry comprises 8.9 per cent of Australia's Gross Domestic Product and generates 50 per cent of Australia's total exports
- New exploration concepts and technologies are being developed by researchers working through the Minerals Down Under National Research Flagship
- Research and development focuses on the unique mineral industry challenges in the Australian context, to increase success and reduce the risks and costs associated with mineral exploration
- The long-term aim is to replenish Australia’s resource base with the discovery of new mineral resources
