Gilmore Project GIS - Geoscience in Land Management and Ore System Research for Exploration (P729 -1999)

Brief description

The Gilmore Project is a pilot study designed to test holistic systems approaches to mapping mineral systems and dryland salinity in areas of complex regolith cover. The project is coordinated by the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, and involves over 50 scientists from 14 research organisations. Research partners include: Cooperative Research Centres for Advanced Mineral Exploration Technologies (CRC AMET), Landscape Evolution and Mineral Exploration (CRC LEME), the CRC for Sensor Signal and Information Processing, and the Australian Geodynamics Cooperative Research Centre (AGCRC) Land & Water Sciences Division of Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS) NSW Department of Land & Water Conservation and the NSW Department of Mineral Resources. Various universities including the Australian National University, University of Canberra, Macquarie University, Monash University, University of Melbourne, and Curtin University of Technology, and Australian National Seismic Imaging Resource (ANSIR). The project area lies on the eastern margin of the Murray-Darling Basin in central-west NSW. The project area was chosen for its overlapping mineral exploration (Au-Cu) and salinity management issues, and the availability of high-resolution geophysical datasets and drillhole materials and datasets made available by the minerals exploration industry. The project has research agreements with the minerals exploration industry, and is collaborating with rural land-management groups, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation. The study area (100 x 150 km), straddles the Gilmore Fault Zone, a major NNW-trending crustal structure that separates the Wagga-Omeo and the Junee-Narromine Volcanic Belts in the Lachlan Fold Belt. The project area includes tributaries of the Lachlan and the Murrumbidgee Rivers, considered to be two of the systems most at risk from rising salinities. This project area was chosen to compare and contrast salt stores and delivery systems in floodplain (in the Lachlan catchment) and incised undulating hill landscapes (Murrumbidgee catchment). The study area is characteristic of other undulating hill landscapes on the basin margins, areas within the main and tributary river valleys, and the footslopes and floodplains of the Murray-Darling Basin itself. Studies of the bedrock geology in the study area reveal a complex architecture. The Gilmore Fault Zone consist of a series of subparallel, west-dipping thrust faults, that juxtapose, from west to east, Cambro-Ordovician meta-sediments and granites of the Wagga Metamorphics, and further to the east, a series of fault-bounded packages comprising volcanics and intrusions, and siliciclastic meta-sediments. Two airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys were flown in smaller areas within the two catchments. Large-scale hydrothermal alteration and structural overprinting, particularly in the volcanics, has added to the complexity within the bedrock architecture.

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