The Australian Geologist - Geological Society of Australia

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The Australian Geologist Newsletter 141, December 2006 Registered by Australia Post Publication No. PP243459/00091 ISSN 0312 2471 Hon Editor: Jess Tyler Mobile: 0408 298 292 Email: tag@gsa.org.au Central Business Office Business Manager: Sue Fletcher Suite 706, 301 George Street Sydney NSW 2000 Tel: (02) 9290 2194 Fax: (02) 9290 2198 Email: info@gsa.org.au GSA website: www.gsa.org.au Edited by SciBiz Media Design and typesetting The Visible Word Pty Ltd Printed by Southwood Press Pty Ltd Distributed by Trade Mailing & Fulfilment Pty Ltd 2 From the President 3 Hon Editor’s Comment 4 Society Update Business Manager’s Report Publicity & Media Education & Outreach Membership Update From the AJES Editor’s Desk Stratigraphic Column Heritage Matters Data Metallogenica 14 News from the Divisions 16 Specialist Group News 19 News 23 Feature 30 Special Report 37 Book Reviews 46 Letters to the Editor 50 Calendar 51 Office Bearers A concretion, caught concreting, from sandstone platforms around Kalbarri, Western Australia. Photo by Paul Ferguson. 52 Publishing Details
From the President In my last column, I mentioned the growing momentum towards the forthcoming International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) in 2008. The IYPE will actually be spread over three years from 2007 to 2009 and aims to raise public awareness of the role that the Earth Sciences can play towards building healthier, safer and wealthier societies. The subtitle for the year, Earth Sciences for Society, reflects our conviction about the importance of our science, but also recognises an underlying concern that this knowledge is frequently under-utilised in decision-making. There are clearly great opportunities for the GSA to take an active role in the various programs of the IYPE and I recommend that you look at their website and the excellent range of brochures (www.yearofplanetearth.org). The principal activities of the IYPE will be focused in two broad programs – promotion of the Earth sciences and enhancing research. These in turn will be organised under ten themes including such areas as groundwater and hazards, as well as resources, the deep Earth and climate, together covering the full spectrum of applications of the Earth sciences. Excellent colour brochures on each of the ten themes are available for download from the website. In October we had a visit from Eduardo de Mulder, Chair of the Board for the IYPE and the driving force behind the campaign by the International Union of Geological Sciences to establish the IYPE. The culmination of this effort was to have the IYPE proclaimed for 2008 by the UN General Assembly at the end of last year. Attention is now turning around the world to implementing a range of activities to mark the triennium ‘year’. In Australia we are fortunate to have two senior advisors to the Board–Ian Lambert of Geoscience Australia and Tom Beer of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, as well as an increasing awareness of the IYPE amongst Earth scientists generally. In part the IYPE had its origin in a highly successful national program in Germany, ‘Planet Earth 2002: year of Earth sciences’, which centred on a series of outreach programs to promote the importance of the Earth sciences and engage the general public and high school students. This year-long program produced a strong increase in the level of interest in the Earth sciences and, most notably, a sharp rise in enrolments of students into university geoscience courses the next year. This is something that we could certainly use here in Australia and something that our Education and Outreach Program within the Society is working hard to address. But the real potential of such programs will only be achieved if there is a widespread involvement by the membership across all of our divisions and specialist groups. So what kinds of activities are being considered for the IYPE around the world On the research side there are plans to produce a new 1:1 million digital geological map of the world and to launch a new journal of Earth sciences within the Nature family in 2008, amongst many others. As for outreach, the possibilities are endless. Ideas include a number of high-level conferences in several continents – our own AESC 2008 presents a clear opportunity, mobile geoscience exhibitions, geological tours and excursions aimed at the general public and students, geoscientists talking about their work in the media, TV documentaries, special events for secondary teachers based around the IYPE themes, release of new commemorative stamps, and photographic exhibitions. In many of these, the IYPE should be effective in opening doors that might otherwise be closed to us. Another innovative idea is the earth caching program (www.earthcache.org) as mentioned in the Education and Outreach Column in this edition of TAG. earth caching, a variant of the increasingly popular geocaching GPS-based navigational game, is aimed at educating people about sites of geoscientific significance. The International Year of Planet Earth presents us as geoscientists with an unparalleled opportunity to promote our science and create an increased awareness of its importance to Australia’s prosperity and wellbeing. I commend this opportunity to all of you and encourage all parts of the Society to think about how we can best answer this challenge. At a quite fundamental level, the prospect of any merger requires a re-examination of our basic structures and the way we do things. In the end a new constitution will need to be (Continued on next page) 2 | TAG December 2006
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Page 6 and 7: Our 'kangaroo raffle' was a popular
Page 8 and 9: SocietyUpdate From the AJES Editor
Page 10 and 11: SocietyUpdate Education&Outreach Th
Page 12 and 13: SocietyUpdate Stratigraphic COLUMN
Page 14 and 15: SocietyUpdate Data Metallogenica Au
Page 16 and 17: Petroleum, the Leigh Creek Sports a
Page 18 and 19: the web, and other items of interes
Page 20 and 21: NEWS Museum unearths and exposes ph
Page 22 and 23: section on a one-day preconference
Page 24: Feature Closer to the brink BY JESS
Page 27 and 28: That plan - released in the same ye
Page 29 and 30: of the zeolite group and is a known
Page 31 and 32: Special Report Special Report ARC 2
Page 33 and 34: PROJECT SUMMARY GRANT Numerical mod
Page 35 and 36: PROJECT SUMMARY GRANT The Southern
Page 37 and 38: PROJECT SUMMARY GRANT New developme
Page 39 and 40: summaries of their respective topic
Page 41 and 42: nomenclature is varied and not cons
Page 43: sentations, frauds, lies, errors, b
Page 46 and 47: and aggression are proffered. Howev
Page 48 and 49: in Asia and Europe. The slip on thi
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Geological Society of Australia Inc
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