TES Themes
McArthur Basin
Tectonic geography of the McArthur Basin, Northern Australia
Major partners: Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS) , Santos Ltd , Origin Ltd , Imperial Oil and Gas, Todd River Resources , Associate Professor Anthony Dosseto (University of Wollongong), Professor Lukas Ackerman (Czech Academy of Sciences), Dr Marcus Kunzmann (CSIRO), Dr Amber Jarrett (Geoscience Australia), Professor Galen Halverson (McGill University, Canada)
Funded by: Australian Research Council Linkage Project LP160101353 with Origin, Santos, NTGS and Imperial Oil and Gas as industry partners, additional funding by Todd River Resources.
Flinders Ranges
Unravelling the Flinders Ranges rocky cradle of life
Major partners: Geological Survey of South Australia , Nature Foundation of South Australia
Funded by: Geological Survey of South Australia, Nature Foundation of South Australia
project title x
Metal isotope chemostratigraphy (Cr, Ca, Mg) and in-situ dating (Rb-Sr, K-Ca) of Proterozoic depositional systems in Australia
Major partners: MinEx CRC, Todd River Resources , Prof Thomas Zack (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Associate Professor Anthony Dosseto (University of Wollongong)
Funded by: MinEx CRC, Todd River Resources
Deep Time Plate Tectonics, Critical Minerals And The Development Of Our Habitable Planet
A grand science quest is to understand how our life-nurturing planet came to be.
This Fellowship aims to use abundant geological information to build a tectonic, bathymetric and topographic digital twin of the Earth’s surface
through its middle age (1800–500 million years ago)—then apply this to investigate how deep earth processes including earthquakes, volcanos and plate tectonics endowed our planet with critical metals and built a habitable world.
Outcomes include ground-breaking data-driven geology and actualistic deep-time full-earth modelling that have not been attempted before.
Expected benefits include de-risking mineral exploration, therefore providing jobs, and honing our responses to challenges facing the modern-day biosphere.
Researchers
Alan Collins, Morgan Blades, Andrew Merdith .....
Specific Projects and Funding
Plate Tectonics, Critical Metals and our Habitable Earth, ARC Laureate Fellowship, FL240100114”
Earth’s mid-life crisis: recipe for a habitable planet? ARC DECRA, DE230101642
Reconstructing the Beetaloo/Greater McArthur Basin System, LP20030145
What we do
The Tectonics and Earth Systems (TES) Group explores how deformation of the solid earth over deep time built a human-habitable, resource-rich planet.
The Tectonics and Earth Systems Group is a part of the Mawson Centre for Geoscience and its research spans the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Resources (ISER) and the Environment Institute.
TES Group members are geologists and geochemists, and our aim is to develop an evolving model of the world where every aspect is testable and mutable.
Methodology
We use geochronology, thermochronology, structural geology, geochemistry, igneous geology and sedimentology to unravel the tectonic geography of a region through deep time.
Our work is data focussed and built from the rock record. As such we work with geochemical proxies for tectonic processes, redox, salinity, productivity, erosion and hydrothermal activity, many of which are pioneering and developmental.
We are also investigating new, rapid, accurate dating techniques, such as laser-ablation analysis of Rb–Sr and K–Ca isotope systems via plasma mass spectrometry (see also our Metal Isotope Group) and are grappling with data analytical approaches to apply to the sizable and diverse data we generate and interpret.
Research Aims
By combining these studies, we attempt to reconstruct the past continents and oceans of the world in a full plate-tectonic manner; focussing on the last 2 billion years of earth history, when we consider plate tectonics operated in a similar manner as it does today.
From these novel, full-earth, reconstructions we strive to quantify feedbacks between geosphere phenomena (such as mountain belt topographic evolution, ocean basin connectivity, and rift development), chemistry of the atmosphere/hydrosphere and the development of the biosphere.