Data integration for greenfields exploration: an example from the East Tennant region, Northern Territory

It is increasingly recognised that, to maintain a sustainable pipeline of mineral resources in Australia, future discoveries will need to be made in areas obscured by more recent cover sequences. A major challenge to mineral exploration in covered frontiers is identifying new prospective fairways, and understanding and mapping important metallogenic processes at a range of scales to enable more effective targeting of exploration. Here, we present evidence for a completely buried corridor of interpreted high prospectivity—the East Tennant region—based on synthesis and integration of a diverse range of geoscientific datasets. Key indicators of the region’s potential include lithospheric-scale architecture, elevated electrical conductivity in the crust and mantle, and modelled and demonstrated hydrothermal alteration in the near surface. Multiscale geophysical surveys show evidence for crustal-scale fluid flow along major structures, connecting the mantle with the surface. Although few geological constraints exist in this region, examination of legacy drillcore and geochronology results demonstrates a similar history to rocks known to host mineralisation across the North Australian Craton. These results provide tantalising indications that the under-explored East Tennant region has significant potential to host major mineral systems. Citation: Schofield, A., Clark, A., Doublier, M.P., Murr, J., Skirrow, R., Goodwin, J., Cross, A. J., Pitt, L., Duan, J., Jiang, W., Wynne, P., O’Rourke, A., Czarnota, K., and I. C. Roach., 2020. Data integration for greenfields exploration: an example from the East Tennant region, Northern Territory. In: Czarnota, K., Roach, I., Abbott, S., Haynes, M., Kositcin, N., Ray, A. and Slatter, E. (eds.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, 1–4.