UltraFine+® The Future

We are currently building new project proposals and collaborations related to the UltraFine+® technology. Over the next three years the team will be looking at developing projects around three key objectives:

1 UltraFine+® Next Gen Science

At the core of all current and future UltraFine+® developments is the fundamental science needed to drive new discoveries. While the UltraFine+® Next Gen Accessibility and Expansion will inevitably incorporate science, the data produced by previous projects and the availability of the workflow enables the interrogation of large-scale scientific questions. This will not only benefit the method and workflow development for previous and future sponsors, but also the mineral exploration community at large. Broad-scale scientific questions include, but are not limited to, spectral and spatial data acquisition and application, soil sample properties and metal mobility in relation to ore deposits, and supervised machine learning (e.g., identification of ore deposit-related “signatures” from the UltraFine+® data sets). The development of an UltraFine+® analysis-ready database that enables the extraction of data will be essential to answer these questions and will advance surface minerals exploration in Australia and beyond.

2 UltraFine+® Next Gen Accessibility

The UltraFine+® Next Gen Analytics for Discovery project has successfully tested a machine learning approach to identify landscape context for geochemical soil sample analyses and improved the UltraFine+® soil analytical method to include additional soil properties. The commercialisation of the Next Gen workflow will include the development of a click-and-collect UltraFine+® Next Gen Data Package for easy interpretation of geochemical samples in landscape context from your desktop.

3 UltraFine+® Next Gen Expansion

Expanding the UltraFine+® Next Gen workflow will have two main aims: (1) developing and testing a workflow that can be applied to soil settings outside of Australia and (2) testing parts of the Next Gen workflow for other applications. The former may include the assessment of different spatial data products that are available outside of Australia as well as amendments to the method to adjust for vastly different soil types (e.g., till, peat-rich soil, young volcanic soils). The latter may include the application and subsequent improvements of parts of the Next Gen workflow for other stages of exploration (e.g., large-scale regional mapping, tenement-scale pre soil survey mapping to identify areas of interest, incorporation of historic and future analytical data into the workflow) and potentially other applications in the environmental and/or agricultural space.

If you are interested in working with us, contact us or email ryan.noble@csiro.au