Geology-Geophysics Seminar Series: Aleksandra Stachowska

We are excited to invite you to the next seminar of the 2025 Geology and Geophysics Seminar Series (formerly Earthbyte Seminars), featuring Dr Aleksandra Stachowska, a researcher at the Seismic Interpretation and Basin Analysis Research Group (SeisSed) at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Science. Aleksandra will be presenting on “Inversion Tectonics Vs. Depositional Systems – Seismic … Read more…

Geology-Geophysics Seminar Series: Wu Jiayu

We are excited to invite you to the upcoming seminar of the 2025 Geology-Geophysics Seminar Series (formerly Earthbyte Seminars), featuring Wu Jiayu a PhD candidate from China University of Geosciences. Wu Jiayu will be presenting on “Data-driven Metallogenic Potential Evaluation and Dynamic Analysis of Southeast Coast of China​” sharing fresh insights and innovative methods in geoscience. Date: February 12, 2025 … Read more…

Geology-Geophysics Seminar Series: Diange Zhou

We are excited to invite you to the next seminar of the 2025 Geology and Geophysics Seminar Series (formerly Earthbyte Seminars), featuring Diange Zhou a PhD candidate from China University of Geosciences. Diange Zhou will be presenting on “Mineral Spatial Distribution Prediction based on Representation Learning” sharing fresh insights and innovative methods in geoscience. Date: February 5, 2025  Time: 11:00 … Read more…

Lamprophyres, gold and orogenies: a mineral systems perspective

The common spatial and temporal association of calk alkaline lamprophyres with orogenic gold deposits has been recognized for more than a century, although interpretations regarding the significance of this association have varied greatly. A persistent lack of consensus on Archean geodynamics and the deposits themselves presented a challenge to the use of a Mineral Systems … Read more…

Geology-Geophysics Seminar Series: Stacia Gordon

We are excited to invite you to the first seminar of the 2025 Geology and Geophysics Seminar Series (formerly Earthbyte Seminars), featuring Professor Stacia Gordon from the University of Nevada-Reno. Stacia will be presenting on “Rates, Conditions, and Scales of Mass Transfer From the Mantle to the Crust: Insights from Earth’s Youngest UHP Terrane” sharing fresh insights and innovative … Read more…

pide: Petrophysical Interpretation tools for geoDynamic Exploration

pide is a Python library for calculating geophysical parameters (e.g., electrical conductivity, seismic velocity), employing the results from experimental petrology, mineral/rock physics, and thermomechanical modelling studies. pide can calculate the theoretical electrical conductivity of any Earth material that exists in the literature. pide can also calculate seismic velocity utilising the external ‘sister’ library SAnTex. Using … Read more…

GPlates Web Service v1.0.0 Released

We are pleased to announce the first official stable release of the GPlates Web Service. The GPlates Web Service is a part of the GPlates project funded by AuScope. The web service is built upon pyGPlates and allows users to utilize the pyGPlates functionalities without the need of installing pyGPlates locally. Users send HTTP requests … Read more…

PyGPlates 1.0.0rc1 released

We’re pleased to announce the release of pyGPlates 1.0.0rc1. Note: This is a pre-release of version 1.0.0.  Version 1.0.0 will be released in January 2025 and will have the same functionality.  This pre-release is mainly to ensure there are no issues with the new pip support. PyGPlates can now be installed using conda or pip.  Please see the installation … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Rafael Cherene

It is a great honour for EarthByte to announce that Rafael Cherene will give a talk on December 11 on “Using Landscape Evolution Models to Predict Margin Stratigraphy and Investigate Geological Hydrogen Storage Potential.”   This is the final seminar of 2024, so don’t miss out on this fascinating event!   Seminar Details: Date: Wednesday, … Read more…

Central Afar: An analogue for oceanic plateau development

The structure, composition, and evolution of oceanic plateaus are poorly understood and strongly debated. Here, we compared the magmatic history and crustal structure of Afar with the Greenland–Iceland–Faroe Ridge and other oceanic plateaus. Key similarities indicate that Central Afar represents the early stage of development of a specific type of oceanic plateau: a rifted oceanic … Read more…

Lithospheric Evolution and Uplift of the Tibetan Plateau During Continental Convergence: Evidence From Early Oligocene Pseudo leucite Phonolites from Southern Qian tang, Central Tibet

The Cenozoic collision of India and Eurasia clearly built the high-elevation Tibetan Plateau, but how this collision was accommodated, and the Tibetan Plateau uplifted, remains an area of study. The widespread occurrence of Cenozoic potassic–ultrapotassic lavas provides a valuable opportunity to constrain the relationship between surface deformation and underlying geodynamic processes. In this study, we … Read more…

Identifying Recycled Materials Using Mo Isotopes in Intraplate Alkali Basalts From the Southeastern Margin of Tibetan Plateau

Mantle heterogeneity in lithology and geochemistry is often attributed to recycled subducted materials. While distinct mantle end-members are identified by radiogenic isotopes, the specific recycled materials contributing to this heterogeneity remain debated. This study presents Mo-Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic data for OIB-like alkali basalts from the Maguan area in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, focusing on slab inputs’ … Read more…

EarthByte Group recognised in 2024 Clarivate highly cited list

Clarivate has named 26 academics from the University of Sydney on its annual Highly Cited Researchers list. The Clarivate list recognises the most influential researchers who have published multiple papers frequently cited by their peers that rank in the top one percent of citations for their field and year in the Web of Science. Professor … Read more…

Lateritic Ni-Co prospectivity modelling in eastern Australia using an enhanced generative adversarial network and positive-unlabelled bagging

The surging demand for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co), driven by the acceleration of clean energy transitions, has sparked interest in the Lachlan Orogen of New South Wales for its potential lateritic Ni-Co resources. Despite recent discoveries, a substantial knowledge gap exists in understanding the full scope of these critical metals in this geological province. … Read more…

Solid Earth carbon degassing and sequestration since 1 billion years ago

Solid Earth CO2 outgassing, driven by plate tectonic processes, is a key driver of carbon cycle models. However, the magnitudes and variations in outgassing are poorly constrained in deep-time. We assess plate tectonic carbon emissions and sequestration by coupling a plate tectonic model with reconstructions of oceanic plate carbon reservoirs and with a thermodynamic model … Read more…

A New View of Deep Earth’s Carbon Emissions

EOS: Advances in plate tectonics research allow a deeper understanding of how greenhouse gases escape from within the planet. by Saima May Sidik7 November 2024 Gases escape from the deep-sea Champagne Vents in the Northern Marianas region of the Pacific, where tectonic plates are colliding. Credit: Submarine Ring of Fire 2014 – Ironman, NOAA/PMEL, NSF Source: Geochemistry, Geophysics, … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Luca Magri

Join us for an upcoming EarthByte Seminar featuring Luca Magri, Postdoctoral Researcher in the EarthByte Group at the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney. Luca will be presenting on “Post-Emplacement Rifting of Oceanic Large Igneous Provinces,” sharing fresh insights and innovative methods in geoscience. Date: November 27  Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. AEDT  Location: Room … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Satyam Singh

We are excited to invite you to the upcoming EarthByte Seminar, where Satyam Singh, a PhD candidate in the EarthByte group at the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Sydney, will deliver an engaging talk. His presentation, titled ‘Topographic Evolution of Active Margins: Exploring the Interplay of Plate Tectonics, Mantle Convection, and Long-Term Climate using Explainable … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Chinese delegation

It is a great honour for EarthByte to announce that a Chinese delegation will be visiting on October 30 to give a talk on “Mesozoic Volcanism and Its Implications for Tectonics and Mineral Exploration in Southeast Coastal China” and “The Developing Chinese Mining Industry”. The presentation will be given by this delegation: Mr. Yan Chengyi, … Read more…

Leveraging Machine Learning and Geophysical Data for Automated Detection of Interior Structures of Cratons

The internal structures and discontinuities of cratons hold considerable economic value due to their tendency for reactivation and different horizontal stress, serving as conduits for fluid flow and mineral deposition over time. Detecting these structures at various depths is critical for accurately mapping prospective zones of metallic mineralisation. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating … Read more…

rgplates now part of GPlates software family

rgplates has joined the GPlates family! rgplates allows the integration of tectonic calculations into the R software environment for statistical computing and graphics. Paleogeographic reconstructions in GPlates can be directly connected to a vast number of statistical libraries available in R, which is also the primary scripting language of the paleobiology community. The figure below … Read more…

EarthByte Group research assistant Lauren Ilano receives Peter Fountain Award

Our longest-serving EarthByte Group research assistant, Lauren Ilano, has recently been awarded the Peter Fountain Award together with Caelan Hearne in memory of Peter Fountain, who was a beloved Maritime industry legend with PIANC Australia & New Zealand.  The award supports outstanding young engineers in their careers as well as their attendance at the PIANC … Read more…

Collaboration between artificial intelligence and Earth science communities for mutual benefit

A recent analysis concluded that Australia is at risk of losing its world-leading advantage in critical and rare minerals if it doesn’t sufficiently leverage artificial intelligence (AI). A large international coalition of Earth scientists and AI researchers is now advocating for stronger bidirectional development and impact between AI and Earth science in a new comment … Read more…

Net Zero Institute White Paper on Critical Minerals and Materials released

The University of Sydney’s Net Zero Institute has just released their White Paper on Critical Minerals & Materials. It represents a massive collaborative effort of over 50 colleagues from the University and international partners. The EarthByte Group has made a contribution to it with an outline of AI-powered mineral prospectivity mapping, particularly applied to copper … Read more…

Faculty of Science News: Leading Faculty of Science researcher awarded prestigious AAS Mawson Medal and Lecture

Leading Faculty of Science researcher awarded prestigious AAS Mawson Medal and Lecture Congratulations to Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz who was formally awarded the AAS Mawson Medal late last month, the first woman to ever receive this illustrious award. Dr Dutkiewicz was awarded the medal at the 70th birthday celebration of the Australian Academy of Science in … Read more…

Spatio-temporal copper prospectivity in the American Cordillera predicted by positive-unlabeled machine learning

Porphyry copper deposits contain the majority of the world’s discovered mineable reserves of copper. While these deposits are known to form in magmatic arcs along subduction zones, the precise contributions of different factors in the subducting and overriding plates to this process are not well constrained, making predictive prospectivity mapping difficult. Empirical machine learning-based approaches … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Richard Scott

We are thrilled to invite you to the next EarthByte Seminar, where Richard Scott, Principal Data Scientist at the BHP Exploration Team, will be our guest speaker. His presentation, titled ‘The Application of Deep Learning in Mineral Exploration,’ will offer valuable insights into cutting-edge techniques in the field. This is a great opportunity to hear … Read more…

EarthByte Seminar Series: Indrani Mukherjee

We’re excited to present the upcoming EarthByte Seminar with guest speaker Indrani Mukherjee, a lecturer and researcher at the University of New South Wales. She will deliver a talk titled ‘A Billion Years of Geological Drama – Boring or Brilliant?’ Seize this chance to gain insights from an expert in the field! Seminar Details: Date: … Read more…

The Conversation: Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across Earth’s surface in a new animation

Two tectonic plates meet in Thingvellir National Park, Iceland. VisualProduction/Shutterstock Alan Collins, Univ of Adelaide Using information from inside the rocks on Earth’s surface, we have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years. It is the first time Earth’s geological record has been used like this, looking so far back … Read more…