GEMOC ARC National Key CentreGEMOC participants
| The host institution for GEMOC is Macquarie
University (in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences). There is a close collaboration with CSIRO Exploration and Mining (EM) (North Ryde) and GA (Geoscience Australia) across an increasingly broad range of projects. Collaborative research, teaching and technology development links have been established with other universities nationally and internationally and these evolve as new alliances become relevant to new directions. GEMOC has developed ongoing collaborative relationships with national and international industry and end-users such as Geological Surveys globally (eg Australian states, Canada, Norway). GEMOC has a wide network of international research and teaching development partners (Appendices 1 and 3). | |
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Changes in 2002 Dr Elena Belousova won an ARC postdoctoral Fellowship commencing 2003, Dr Kuo-Lung Wang continued his Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MURF) from 2001 and Dr Vladmir Malkovets was awarded a MURF commencing 2003. Dr Simon Turner was awarded a Federation Fellowship
in 2002 and will commence at Macquarie in mid 2003. Simon
is currently a Royal Society Fellow at Bristol University, UK.
He will be setting up a new laboratory and instrument facility
to explore new frontiers related to time scales and rates of
change that are fundamental to understanding natural processes
and the development and testing of quantitative physical models
in the Earth Sciences. Uranium decay-series isotope studies
are revolutionising this field by providing time information
in the range 100-100,000 years, similar to that of many important
Earth processes. This work will be relevant to eruption
cycles of volcanoes, the Earth s carbon cycle, time scales and
relative roles of physical and chemical erosion in Australian
river basins as well as other environmentally important systems
and processes.
Three other experienced geochemists, Dr John Ketchum (from the Royal Ontario Museum Geochronology Laboratory, Canada), Dr Rhiannon George (from Bristol University) and Dr Kirsty Tomlinson (with experience from the Canadian Geological Survey) will also join GEMOC in 2003 and the 2003 Report will have details of their expertise and roles. Another highlight of 2002 was the beginning of a new venture
with the part-time appointment of Adjunct Professor Mike Etheridge
to investigate the Management of Risk, Uncertainty and Value
in Mineral Exploration. This has brought important links
with Macquarie Graduate School of Management, added a different
interface with the exploration industry, and created a new lively
group of researchers. Mike s research has evolved from
work that he has been doing with mineral exploration companies
over the past 5 years as a Principal of SRK Consulting, one of
the world s premier science and engineering consulting firms.
A number of recent studies of the mineral exploration industry
have clearly demonstrated that new mine discovery rates have
fallen and discovery costs have risen steadily over the past
10 to 15 years, to the extent that investors are questioning
the value fundamentals of the industry. Countries like
Australia, whose economic performance depends heavily on its
resources industries, need new discoveries to prevent a gradual
erosion of its standard of living. Mike s research focuses
on defining the causes of the drop in exploration performance
and developing new systems, tools and practices to reverse the
decline.
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