What lies beneath: unveiling the fine-scale 3D compositional and thermal structure of the sub continental lithosphere and upper mantle. We will produce the first high-resolution images of the thermal and mineralogical structure of the earth's mantle beneath Australia, western USA, and South Africa. This information represents the key to our understanding of society-relevant activities such as ore and energy exploration and natural hazard assessment.
Beneath Bass Strait: linking Tasmania and mainland Australia using a novel seismic experiment. A new low-cost approach based on background seismic energy and earthquake recordings will be used to construct three-dimensional maps of the deep structure beneath Bass Strait. Understanding the broad scale geology of southeast Australia is of national importance because the area is host to an abundance of petroleum, geothermal and mineral resources.
Taming the nonlinearity of geophysical inversions. This project will develop new ways to extract information from complex geophysical data sets used to construct images of the Earth's interior. Applications will be important to indirect imaging problems in the physical and engineering sciences and particularly to the discovery of resources within the Earth upon which Australian society is dependent.
Next-generation tsunami warning. This project generates the science for rapid tsunami forecasts of sufficient accuracy and detail to maintain public confidence in tsunami warnings. It will show how next-generation warning systems can assimilate multi-sensor data to provide probabilistic forecasts enabling emergency managers to make well-informed decisions about imminent tsunamis.
Southern Ocean storms and noise sources from Australian seismic array recordings. Storm severity in the Southern Ocean - is it increasing? This project will investigate storminess using decades of seismic records from Australian stations, adding unique data for remote ocean areas with no direct weather observations, with profound implications for the global climate system.