History

CSIRO Mineral Resources has a long history in EO applications for the mineral resources sector. For more than 40 years, we have been developing and evaluating optical Earth observation instruments for addressing challenges of the mineral resources sector, collaborating with world-leading research institutions, such as ESA, JAXA, and NASA. We have been developing new methods for extracting mineralogical and other parameters important for mineral exploration and mining, and have set world standards with our higher level geoscience products. Key milestones include:

  • During the 1970’s with Andy Green, Jon Huntington and others worked on developing uses for the early Landsat series satellites for mineral exploration and geological mapping
  • Development of world-standard image-processing techniques (e.g. MNF, Green et al., 1988 < 1,580 citations and counting …)
  • Development of airborne sensors, such as MIRACO2LAS (Whitbourn et al., 1997) and Operational Airborne Remote Sensing – Thermal Infrared Profiling Spectrometer (OARS- TIPS; Hausknecht et al., 2001)
  • Development of instruments for ground validation of EOI, such as the Portable Field Mineral Analyzer (PIMA), developed by Terry Cocks (commercialised by Integrated Spectronics Pty. Ltd., ISPL)
  • Peter Mason, Jon Huntington and Sasha Pontual initiated the development of CSIRO’s The Spectral Geologist software, which became an essential software for processing reflectance spectra
  • In the mid 1990’s Jon Huntington, Ken McCracken and Andy Green were awarded the Australia Prize for Science for their early work in geology image processing and utilisation and shortly after that Jon pioneered the ARIES hyperspectral satellite concept, that to this day has not seen the availability of anything equal in global sensing capability.
  • In collaboration with Fugro Airborne Surveys (FAS), Peter Hausknecht and colleagues developed the Operational Airborne Research Spectrometer (OARS), a hyperspectral profiling reflectance spectrometer to examine alternative means to collect and deliver exploration data, based on the principles of reflectance spectroscopy.
  • In 2004, Cindy Ong received the Golden Gecko Award for Environmental Excellence for the project – “Quantitative monitoring of iron ore dust from the air” from the WA Department of Industry which used airborne hyperspectral imagery to map and accurately determine the amounts of dust on mangrove leaves in the Port Hedland harbour.
  • In 2005 and in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Western Australia, Tom Cudahy and the Spectral Sensing Group released airborne hyperspectral-derived mineral maps of the 1:100K map sheet of Kalgoorlie (link!)
  • In 2008, the Western Australian Centre of Excellence for 3D Mineral Mapping was founded, developing new concepts for integration of surface and subsurface mineralogy and geochemistry (e.g. Rocklea Dome, Western Australia)
  • In 2012, CMR released the World’s 1st ASTER-derived continental scale mineral maps (Cudahy et al., 2016; Caccetta et al., 2013), which actually led to greenfields discoveries (Laukamp et al., 2015) and the Explorer of the Year award for C3DMM’s development of the continental ASTER Geoscience Products and its involvement in the Kentor Gold discovery by the Australian Mining Journal.
  • Since 2019, a series of new hyperspectral spaceborne sensors have been launched by various organisations (e.g. PRISMA – ASI; EnMAP – DLR; DESIS – DLR; EMIT – JPL). CSIRO Mineral Resources’ Discovery Program is heavily involved in the evaluation of this new suite of sensors for mineral mapping and critical metals exploration, as well as ground validation and CalVal.