GEMOC ARC National Key Centre

Director's preface

THIS REPORT is required as part of GEMOC’s formal annual accounting to the Australian Research Council.  It summarises our activities for 2003 over the broad range of GEMOC activities, including research, technology development, strategic applications and industry interaction, international links and teaching (at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels).  We invite you to read the sections of interest to you and would welcome your feedback.

This year we are experimenting with new ways of presenting our Annual Report.  The hard copy no longer contains our complete report.  The full version is available on our website (www.es.mq.edu.au/GEMOC/) by following the links to the 2003 Annual Report, which can be read online or downloaded as a pdf file.  Sections that are only available electronically are highlighted in the Table of Contents and through the text.  We enclose a survey to gauge your reaction to different presentation formats, and you can also email your opinion from the website.

As reported last year, GEMOC became self-supporting in 2002 (Commonwealth Key Centre funding for the 1995 round of Key Centres was limited to six years, with no extensions).  Our funding now comes from a broad range of sources including the Australian Research Council schemes, industry collaborative projects, delivery of novel exploration methodologies and value-added products to industry, strategic partnerships with technology manufacturers, non-ARC government sources, and international links and alliances that provide reciprocal resources.  A $5 million DEST Systemic Infrastructure grant (2002-2004) is allowing GEMOC to maintain its technological edge and develop new analytical applications in geochemistry.

A highlight of 2003 was the construction (to be completed early 2004) of high-quality serviced spaces to house instruments purchased under the DEST Systemic Infrastructure grant and to provide ultra-clean geochemical facilities; these include infrastructure for the development of the U-Series facility by Simon Turner and co-workers.  This work will double the original laboratory space and, with the new instrumentation, will provide a unique national resource in integrated geochemical analysis.  Large building projects always provide interesting scenarios both logistically and financially and the support of Macquarie University and especially of the Vice-Chancellor have been outstanding.  The management talents and construction knowledge of Peter Squibb (from Macquarie Buildings and Grounds) have solved many problems.

Research highlights for 2003 include the broadening of our programs beyond the original goals of understanding the lithosphere and the role of the lithospheric mantle in lithosphere evolution and metallogenesis.  This has taken our research both deeper into the Earth, to address geodynamic processes below the lithosphere, and up into the crustal regime.  Both of these directions have synergies with industry collaborative projects, illustrating GEMOC’s philosophy of addressing fundamental “big questions” through basic research with parallel strategic and applied goals and with support from relevant technology development. 

In addition, new ways of measuring the timing and rates of geological processes have provided more exciting possibilities.  The maturing of the application of the Re-Os system for dating important mantle events (including lithosphere stabilisation times) using in situ analyses of tiny mantle sulfide grains now provides a method, currently unique to GEMOC, for understanding the timing of mantle processes.  The TerraneChron^TM methodology (see Research Highlights) is allowing us to track large-scale crustal tectonism, test styles of  crust-mantle linkage and probe the nature and formation age of the hidden lower crust.  The processes and time scales of magma formation, transport and differentiation beneath western Pacific island arc volcanoes, and the time scales and relative roles of physical and chemical erosion in Australian river basins are being evaluated with U-series methodologies.

GEMOC’s wide-ranging contributions to national and international conferences and workshops by many staff and postgraduate students again emphasise our continuing multifaceted approaches to understanding the way the Earth works.

GEMOC continues to be strongly supported by the Vice-Chancellor and the Executive at Macquarie.

We look forward to another year of exciting new advances.

Suzanne Y. O'Reilly

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