Australia’s science and research priorities: conversation starter

Submission to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources on Developing Australia’s Science and Research Priorities and
National Science Statement – a National Conversation Starter
AuScope welcomes the 2023 National Conversation Starter to update Australia’s Science and
Research Priorities and our National Science Statement. We hereby provide feedback on our most significant challenges, opportunities and strengths, and the capabilities and capacity needed to address these challenges.

AuScope is Australia’s provider of research infrastructure to the national Earth and geospatial community working on fundamental geoscience questions and grand challenges like climate change, natural resources security and natural hazards. The Department of Education funds us under the
National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) alongside 26 organisations that enable the full breadth of STEM and HASS research. You can find the AuScope team, tools, data, analytics and services at Geoscience Australia, CSIRO, state and territory geological surveys and universities nationally.

As such, AuScope is well-positioned to articulate and discuss our greatest science and research challenges, opportunities and strengths. The following highlights our recommendations.

The Australian Science and Research Priorities should focus on themes in which we as a nation have specific capability, opportunity or need. The Australian continent and Antarctic Territory provide a unique natural laboratory that contains the Earth’s oldest and youngest rocks and stores within them a record of the formation and evolution of our planet, its resources, and climate through deep time.
Nowhere else on Earth do researchers have access to this breadth of geological information.

Similarly, few other nations have access to the vast natural resources that we have in Australia.
However, given the continued economic prosperity provided by mining and exploration over the past century and a half, it is easy to think these resource systems are well understood and easy to find. Yet these resource systems are poorly understood and difficult to find.

As we move to decarbonise the economy, our need for various “critical minerals'' is growing rapidly.
While we have significant known reserves, demand will very quickly outstrip supply. Demand will be particularly strong for things like copper and nickel, which remain vital to all forms of low emissions transport and storage of renewable energy. Over the next 20 years, it is estimated that demand for copper will total the amount mined during all of human history. Despite our best efforts in exploration, recycling and developing a circular economy, we do not yet know where this copper will be sourced.
Given the long lead time on turning discoveries of new mineralisation into a mine, time is running out.

The discovery of critical mineral resources is a national research challenge (and opportunity).
Traditional approaches to mineral exploration have been met with diminishing success, with all “low

AuScope Enabling Australian geoscience innovation through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure
Strategy (NCRIS) Address School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of ––––– 1
Melbourne VIC 3010 ABN 33 125 908 376 Email info@auscope.org.au Website www.auscope.org.au
hanging fruit” discoveries already made. The next frontier of mineral exploration in Australia will be beneath shallow transported cover sequences and will therefore be based on data-intensive predictive geoscience approaches. As such, we must build the capability and capacity to drive the development of data-intensive predictive geoscience. These areas include the development of novel geophysical and geochemical sensors and techniques, automated and autonomous monitoring and sampling, application of AI and ML to large (but often sparsely sampled) geoscience datasets, and the underpinning FAIR datasets, and data products, to support these approaches.

We must also ensure we can process these complex minerals domestically to develop sovereign supply chains based on new mineral discoveries. Maintaining this capability requires ongoing support for strategic science, engineering and research areas, including metallurgy and material characterisation. While these fields may not have the appeal of AI and other novel techniques, there is an absolute need for these skills if Australia is to capitalise on future critical mineral discoveries.
Australia is currently at risk of losing this capability through uncoordinated educational restructuring and requires a National strategy to support these essential science and research disciplines.

Similarly, geophysics is an essential underpinning capability for addressing Australia’s most significant challenges. For example, developing a predictive geoscience capability and identifying and understanding groundwater, mineral deposits, and geohazards beneath the shallow sedimentary cover depend on Australia’s capacity in Geophysics. However, there has been a significant loss of research and training capability in geophysics nationally over recent years.

AuScope supports a thematic approach to the development of research and science priorities. There are many examples where geoscience research will provide unique insight and perspective on thematic national priorities. This is particularly true for environmental monitoring (e.g. Coastal impacts), climate change modelling and adaptation, resources and the circular economy and waste storage, to name just a few.

One thematic challenge is the sustainable management of resources in our sedimentary basin. For example, the Gippsland Basin produces oil and gas and supports most Victorian power generation through brown coal. Yet, this basin also contains vast fresh groundwater resources, has a high potential for geothermal energy production and carbon geosequestration and supports agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism. These individual basin resources tend to be managed and developed in isolation, with data relevant to the associated industry not widely available or discoverable.

Indeed, coal, oil, gas, groundwater, CO2 storage and geothermal exist within the same location and our knowledge of these complex systems needs to be integrated. There is a risk in planning decisions relating to one use (e.g. storage of CO2) sterilising a future use (e.g. geothermal or groundwater).
This becomes a particularly complex transdisciplinary challenge considering the full breadth of basin resources and related industries.

AuScope Enabling Australian geoscience innovation through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure
Strategy (NCRIS) Address School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of ––––– 2
Melbourne VIC 3010 ABN 33 125 908 376 Email info@auscope.org.au Website www.auscope.org.au
Supporting these significant challenges is the accessibility and interoperability of data used in the observation, analysis, modelling and simulation of these Earth systems. In delivering new and integrated insights, data governance, accessibility, interoperability, and analytics must be addressed.
These fundamental data issues should underpin Australia’s science and research priorities.

Please reach out regarding any of the themes presented here. We are more than happy to discuss any details regarding the development of Australia’s Science and Research Priorities and its relations to the Australian geoscience community.

Kind regards,

Dr Tim Rawling
Chief Executive Officer
AuScope Ltd

AuScope Enabling Australian geoscience innovation through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure
Strategy (NCRIS) Address School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of ––––– 3
Melbourne VIC 3010 ABN 33 125 908 376 Email info@auscope.org.au Website www.auscope.org.au