AUSTRALIAN NEOTECTONICS: NEW SCIENCE FOR UNCONVENTIONAL ENERGY, MINERAL RESOURCES,
GROUNDWATER, AND HAZARD ASSESSMENT
This 2-day Symposium is to be held from Monday 29th February to Tuesday 1st March 2016, at
Geoscience Australia, Canberra. This event is being convened by the GSA’s Environmental,
Engineering and Hydrogeology Specialist Group (EEHSG), and is sponsored by the Melbourne Energy
Institute. Registration for the event is essential, but free! Travel grants for students wishing to
participate will be considered.
This 2-day symposium will explore how an understanding of active (Neogene-to-Recent) tectonic
processes helps inform contemporary geoscience issues of seismic hazard, mineral, energy and
groundwater resources and environmental management in Australia. The Symposium will focus on
the potential benefit of aligning challenging contemporary problems in resource and environmental
management with new ways of thinking about how subtle tectonic processes have shaped the
Australian continent over the last few million years.
Over a dozen research leaders from Academia, Government and Industry have been invited to
present papers, with other contributions welcomed. If interested in participating, please contact Dr
Ken Lawrie (ken.lawrie@ga.gov.au; Tel. 02 62499847; Mob. 0427 434950). For those wishing to
present a paper, you are invited to submit abstracts (350 word limit), with the best papers selected
for oral contributions. Opportunities also exist to present poster papers.
Further information will be provided in January 2016. Keynote speakers include:
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Professor Doug Burbank, University of California, Santa Barbara. Doug has been a major
contributor to the emerging field of tectonic geomorphology with a focus on how mountain
building, erosion, and climate shape landscapes at time scales ranging from 100-107 years. Most
of Doug’s research has focused on the actively deforming Himalaya, Tibetan Plateau, Tien Shan,
Andes, and NZ Southern Alps, as well as on older Cenozoic orogenic belts. Doug’s expertise
includes synthesizing structural, stratigraphic, geomorphic, climatic, and chronologic data to
develop insights on the driving forces, signatures, rates, and consequences of landscape change.
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Professor Mike Sandiford, Director Melbourne Energy Institute & Chair of Geology
University of Melbourne. Mike Sandiford's geoscience research examining the links between
earthquakes, geomorphic records and intraplate stress has been crucial to the growing interest
in active tectonics in Australia. His work on dynamic topography showed how the Australian
continent provides a special record of continental scale titling, including how such iconic
features of Australian landscape such as the Lake Eyre Basin may relate to upper mantle flow
instabilities. In his role as Director at the interdisciplinary Melbourne Energy Institute he also
works on the issues of large-scale sustainable energy systems.