AGN Webinar 5: The National Argon Map — a comprehensive coverage of Ar/Ar geochronology data of the Australian continent
Coast to coast: Ar/Ar geochronology across Australia.
In the AGN’s fifth public webinar we heard from Dr Marnie Forster of ANU, the project leader for The National Argon Map project (NAM), who discussed the motivations behind the initiative and how geoscientists can get involved.
Australia’s NAM
The National Argon Map (NAM) project is an AuScope 2020 Pilot Project led out of the Australian National University and overseen by an independent advisory panel led by Dr Geoff Fraser of Geoscience Australia. NAM is being developed in collaboration with the National Argon Network, involving the Argon laboratories at the Australian National University, Curtin University, the University of Queensland and The University of Melbourne. This new data registry is visualised across a map of Australia with age, geological and sample data stored and made accessible for future use. The registry builds on the legacy data of NAM, a Geoscience Australia and ANU initiative.
The AuScope pilot project is supporting the addition of vital new Ar/Ar geochronology data to the existing legacy data compiled in the Geoscience Australia NAM. The aim is to build on the existing NAM, to ‘fill the gaps’ in this isotopic map, to undertake Ar/Ar geochronology in areas that have as yet no data, or areas where important information is missing, or new techniques bring new information.
Dr Marnie Forster explains why Ar/Ar?
Ar/Ar can produce age data from diverse geological scenarios. A wide range of different minerals can be used as well as whole-rocks, volcanic glass and more. Ar/Ar can date the very young to the very old, from thousands to billions of years ago, in events that range from new growth, recrystallisation, metamorphism, deformation, and alteration (caused by heat, fluids, mineralisation) linking into mineral resource exploration. In particular the NAM will allow the linking of existing high-temperature geochronology (U–Pb or Hf) maps to low-temperature (FT, U-Th/He) geochronology maps, providing an important infrastructure base required to allow the unravelling of time in the Australian geological architecture.
You can watch the webinar in full here.
WRITTEN BY
Hayden Dalton and the AGN team
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The National Argon Map (NAM)