AusLAMP spotlights untapped minerals

Explorers looking to develop northern Australia’s untapped mineral resources will benefit from a new geophysical model able to peer hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt. Picture: Gary Ramage

Explorers looking to develop northern Australia’s untapped mineral resources will benefit from a new geophysical model able to peer hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface.

Resources and Water Minister Keith Pitt will announce the release of the Australian Lithospheric Architecture Magneto­telluric Project (AusLAMP) model at a conference in Darwin on Thursday.

Geoscience Australia developed the model under the federal government’s $225m Exploring the Future program, which mapped more than three million square kilometres of northern Australia between 2016 and 2020.

“This model images the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, tens to hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface, using magnetotellurics (MT), a geophysical method which uses special ground-based instruments to measure naturally occurring magnetic and electric fields,” Mr Pitt said.

“Like a live wire detector, AusLAMP identifies natural electric conductors in the Earth that are sometimes linked to copper, gold and associated critical mineral deposits. This helps explorers zoom in on prospective areas.

“This new ‘bottom up’ view of the Earth shines a light on features that indicate the potential occurrence of large mineral systems across the Northern Territory and Queensland, including systems related to copper and gold mineralisation that will be of considerable interest to mineral explorers.”

He said several major mines around Australia were linked to conductivity features like the ones identified by the AusLAMP model, including the trillion-­dollar Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.

Exploring for the Future data was helping 33 companies explore the East Tennant to Mt Isa region, with 165,000sq km of new tenements staked out. “The program provides the industry with valuable data, which accelerates resource discoveries,” he said.

Mr Pitt will speak about the model in NT Resources Week.