The world’s largest satellite-derived geosciences map capturing the entire State of Western Australia was released last week by Mines and Petroleum Minister Norman Moore.
Mr Moore said the ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection) map provided a new generation of satellite information, which would change the way explorers looked for mineral deposits.
“The suite of satellite-derived ASTER products that make up the map will supply basic information about the dominant rock and soil-forming mineral components of WA,” he said.
“The resources sector will benefit greatly from access to the map, which provides better characterisation and understanding of the State’s geology.
The project was supported by a $300,000 contribution from the State Government’s $80million Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS), funded by Royalties for Regions.
The project was a collaboration between the Department of Mines and Petroleum’s (DMP) Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) and the Centre for Three Dimensional Mineral Mapping Centre of Excellence (C3DMM) and was led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) Minerals Down Under Flagship.
CSIRO developed the software and computing capabilities to piece together 14 different surface-composition maps of various mineral suites, resulting from the surface weathering of rocks.
The WA mosaic is sourced from 12,000 ASTER scenes with about 1,500 used in the final mosaic. Each ASTER image is 60km by 60km, with pixel elements ranging from 15m -90m.
The ASTER WA suite of maps is available for purchase from GSWA for $132
The TIF and JPG format data can be downloaded over the web at no cost from the CSIRO’s webportal: http://c3dmm.csiro.au or the Auscope portal: http://portal.auscope.org/portal/gmap.html.
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