Celebrating top AuScope enabled papers of 2021
Here at AuScope HQ, we are excited to celebrate the many high impact geoscience papers this year. Image: AuScope / xvector via Freepik
Take a dive into the top AuScope enabled science papers of 2021! Here we present a collection of newly published geoscience research that captures a breadth of new knowledge, from the depths of ancient oceans to the spinning edges of asteroids. Excitingly, this new knowledge will contribute to both ongoing learning about our shapeshifting planet, and solutions to global decadal geoscience challenges.
Predicting the location of copper deposits to support the clean energy transition
This paper describes research led by Julian Diaz-Rodriguez from The University of Sydney that successfully explored how GPlates software and machine learning can predict locations of large copper deposits around the world. This research was communicated with the public via an article in The Conversation, which was read 25,000 times on the platform, republished 18 times by global media outlets. Image: The Conversation (right).
“Over the next 25 years the world consumption of copper is expected to exceed all copper metal ever mined because copper is a key enabler of a clean energy future – but significant new copper resources need to be discovered.
The integration of geology and geophysics with Earth’s plate tectonic evolution and artificial intelligence is creating a new exploration toolbox to understand the formation of copper deposits. The project builds on AuScope-enabled data synthesis through space and time, assimilating the wealth of geodata into a four-dimensional virtual Earth model.”
— Professor Dietmar Müller, Simulation, Analysis & Modelling Program (SAM), University of Sydney
Investigating hydrogen in olivine to understand how life evolved on Earth
This paper, written by Dr Sylvie Demouchy from Universite de Montpellier and CNRS and Dr Olivier Alard from Macquarie University, explains how hydrogen can be incorporated into olivine through its impurities, revealing information about magmatic and mantle processes in the Earth. Oliver explains that this study is impactful from two perspectives: method development and a better understanding of hydrogen behaviour. Image: Pyrope
“This study has a double-sided impact of novel method development and new findings about hydrogen’s games of hide-and-seek below the Earth’s crust. Understanding the budget, distribution, and behaviour of hydrogen in the mantle is key to understanding the long-term Earth-scale cycle of the life elements namely carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur. It is also key to understanding the transfer of economic elements from the mantle to the crust and to ore deposits.”
— Dr Olivier Alard, AuScope Geochemistry Network (AGN), Macquarie University
Investigating asteroid Vesta’s ‘mini planet’ like structure to gain a bearing on our own
In this paper, Professor Fred Jordan and collaborators from Curtin University detail the history of volcanism on Vesta, the second-largest asteroid in our solar system. Fred’s research, communicated in this video (and AuScope story), has a bearing on our understanding of Earth’s compositional evolution. Video: Supplied
“Vesta is an absolute favourite when it comes to asteroids, and the only still largely intact asteroid in the solar system that differentiated into a core, mantle and crust. That means it is like a mini-planet. This is a natural laboratory for geologists who try to understand how planetary bodies evolve. This paper addresses how long Vesta stayed volcanically active. Turns out that meteorites from Vesta seem to indicate that the last bit of activity at / or near the surface of Vesta occurred 35 million years after initial accretion which occurred about4,565 million years ago.”
— Professor Fred Jourdan, AuScope Earth Composition & Evolution Program (ECE), Curtin University
Understanding the source depths of gold
In this paper, led by Professor Graham Heinson from The University of Adelaide, we see how lower crustal resistivity signatures can help locate gold systems produced that are made in the mountain-building process (known as orogenesis). WATCH: Graham’s presentation on this AuScope enabled work. Image: James St. John
”This paper shows an amazing correlation between orogenic gold found in Western Victoria and the electrical resistivity of the lower crust. Over 95% of all gold mines are located above a region of resistivity less than 20 ohm metres at depth below 20 kilometers, linking the final deposit to the source of the gold in the deep crust.”
— Dr Graham Heinson, AuScope Earth Imaging and Sounding Program, The University of Adelaide
Better understanding Australia’s globally unique earthquake regime
In this paper, Xiangdong Lin from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an international team of collaborators detail an AuSIS enabled investigation that further constrains the globally unique crustal stress regime of the Earth in southwest Western Australia (Yilgarn Craton). Image (modified): Lin et al. (2021)
“This work uses the expanded AuSIS network to calculate reliable stress indicators for the globally unique seismic region called the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia. It has received relatively good engagement since it was published in May 2021 (102 views, 108 downloads), testament to the globally geoscience research community’s interest in contextualising continental stress within an ever-shifting global tectonic plate regime.”
— Professor Malcolm Sambridge, AuScope’s Seismometers In Schools Program (AuSIS), The ANU
Using bulk gravity data and fast algorithms to see beneath Earth’s surface
This paper describes research led by Dr Andrea Codd from The University of Queensland that used AuScope enabled esys–Escript code to develop a new algorithm to conduct large-scale 3D imaging of Earth’s subsurface from gravity and magnetic field anomaly data. Authors anticipate this new algorithm to have a wide-reaching impact within the geophysics community since it enables far more efficient geophysical data inversion (pictured) in both basic and applied geoscience research applications. Image: supplied
“The approach results in a computationally scalable method to solve a constraint optimisation problem combining unstructured meshes and algebraic multi-grids to accelerate convergence. Using a parallel compute cluster the new method's effectiveness for 3D imaging is demonstrated for field data sets with over a million data points which could not be processed using conventional methods.”
— Professor Lutz Gross, Simulation, Analysis & Modelling Program (SAM), University of Queensland
Reconstructing Earth’s tectonic plate configuration in the last billion years
In this paper, Dr Andrew Merdith and collaborators at The University of Sydney use GPlates software to extend full-plate tectonic models into deep time. This work gained global media attention via outlets like New York Times, placing it in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric (score: 6996). Video: EarthByte
“When we look at the top papers by both citations and Altmetric score, this paper is a clear stand-out. It is hardly surprising that being able to witness our planet’s movements on such a grand scale — in terms of time and geography — has captured people’s imagination across the globe. A simple case of GPlates taking over the world.”
— Philomena Manifold and Jo Condon, AuScope
AUTHORS
Philomena Manifold and
Jo Condon, AuScope