Is it a bird? Is it a passenger plane? Between June and November, if you're north or west of Melbourne, you may spot something a little different overhead: a specially equipped aircraft conducting a geoscience survey.
The Geological Survey of Victoria and Geoscience Australia are working together on an airborne electromagnetic survey across central Victoria.
The aircraft will fly over the survey area measuring how easily electric current flows through the ground. Materials like salty water, clay, graphite and metal-rich rocks conduct current well, while dry rocks like granite and sandstone do not.
Mapping conductivity differences helps identify what's beneath the surface.
The survey results also support the Victorian Critical Minerals Roadmap by delivering a new dataset to improve understanding of geology associated with Victoria's antimony occurrences. Antimony is a critical mineral used in a range of modern technologies.
Once the data has been checked, it will be made publicly available through Geoscience Australia's data portals.
Making this information freely available will help inform land use and resource management decisions.
Image courtesy of Xcalibur Smart Mapping.
