Kauring Airborne Gravity Test Site

Overview

The Kauring airborne gravity test site provides a location for benchmarking the capabilities of airborne gravity (AG), airborne gravity gradiometer (AGG) and other airborne sensing systems. The site is located approximately 100 kilometres east of Perth, Western Australia, is free of low level flight restrictions, has minimal human infrastructure and hosts gentle rolling topography. Significant gravity and magnetic anomalies have been defined within the Kauring test site by detailed ground and airborne surveys. Individuals, companies or research organisations are invited to acquire data over the test site and make the data (and/or derived products) publicly available for independent analysis via this web page.

The test site data will allow interested individuals and organisations to compare AG and AGG data to the detailed ground gravity data (or products derived from these data). It will also allow direct comparison of different AG and AGG systems over the same gravity features where all other variables, besides the measuring system are defined and constant.

Airborne datasets acquired and made publicly available via this web page will provide the research community with an increasingly valuable resource for developing and demonstrating data acquisition, processing, modelling and interpretation methods. In addition to AG and AGG systems, the site may be used to demonstrate and compare various airborne magnetic systems (total magnetic intensity (TMI), vector, and gradient tensor systems), airborne electromagnetic (AEM) systems and digital terrain mapping systems.

The test site is a collaborative project between Geoscience Australia, the Geological Survey of Western Australia, Rio Tinto Limited and Fugro Airborne Surveys Pty Ltd.

Location

Kauring Location and Test Flight Protocols

Basic data sets

Public domain geophysical datasets over the Kauring region, with regional to detailed data extents, are available at the following scales:

  • Airborne gravity gradiometry test area (Kauring detailed) - Figure 1
  • Airborne gravity test area (Kauring semi-detailed) - Figure 2
  • Cunderdin 2009 gravity survey area (Kauring regional) - Figure 3

Kauring Geophysical Datasets, August 2010 - magnetic, radiometric, elevation, gravity and digital geology datasets

WorldView-2 Elevation Data

In August 2011 the Kauring Airborne Geophysical Test Range was targeted for a survey by the WorldView-2 satellite (©DigitalGlobe 2011) on behalf of the Geological Survey of Western Australia. The WorldView-2 satellite captures high resolution imagery with 8 spectral bands.

This dataset was acquired to create a Digital Surface Model (DSM) and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) at a 1 metre pixel size suitable for the correction of airborne gravity data. DigitalGlobe has agreed to the release of the DSM and DTM to outside parties.

The DSM is the optical surface as seen by the spectral sensors and includes the height of buildings, vegetation etc. To convert from the DSM to the DTM, which is the height of the ground surface, the height of the buildings and vegetation were removed. Converting the DSM to a DTM required masking out of the trees and buildings and interpolating the height values across these areas.

Analysis of the DTM indicates accuracies of the order of 0.5-0.7 metres can be obtained in areas where sufficient reflections from the ground surface are available.

The final datasets were processed by Geoimage Pty Ltd during August – September 2011 and were made available on 7 December 2011 via the Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System on the Geoscience Portal which is an initiative of the State, Territory and Australian Government geoscience agencies.

References

Dransfield, M, Le Roux, T, and Burrows, D 2010, 'Airborne gravimetry and gravity gradiometry at Fugro Airborne Surveys', in RJL Lane (editor), Airborne Gravity 2010 Abstracts from the ASEG-PESA Airborne Gravity 2010 Workshop. Published jointly by Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Geoscience Australia Record 2010/23 and GSNSW File GS2010/0457, pp. 49-57.

Grujic, M 2010, Optimisation of terrain corrections for practical Airborne Gravity gradiometer surveys. Unpub. Bachelor Of Science Honours thesis, Monash University, Melbourne.

Howard, D, Gujic, M, and Lane, R 2010, 'The Kauring airborne gravity and airborne gravity gradiometer test site, Western Australia', in RJL Lane (editor), Airborne Gravity 2010 Abstracts from the ASEG-PESA Airborne Gravity 2010 Workshop. Published jointly by Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Geoscience Australia Record 2010/23 and GSNSW File GS2010/0457, pp. 107-114.

Lane, RJL 2010 (editor), Airborne Gravity 2010 Abstracts from the ASEG-PESA Airborne Gravity 2010 Workshop. Published jointly by Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Geoscience Australia Record 2010/23 and GSNSW File GS2010/0457.

Lane, R, Grujic, M, Aravanis, T, Tracey, R, Dransfield, M, Howard, D, and Smith, B 2009, 'The Kauring Airborne Gravity Test Site, Western Australia', Eos Trans. AGU Fall Meeting Supplement, vol.90, Abstract G51A-0656.

Lane, R, Smith, R, Dransfield, M, and Robson, D 2010, 'Introduction to Airborne Gravity 2010', in RJL Lane (editor), Airborne Gravity 2010 Abstracts from the ASEG-PESA Airborne Gravity 2010 Workshop. Published jointly by Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Geoscience Australia Record 2010/23 and GSNSW File GS2010/0457, pp. 1-4.

Morgan, KH, and Herlihy, JH 1956, The geology of the Kauring area. Unpub. Bachelor of Science thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth.

Topic contact: minerals@ga.gov.au Last updated: May 31, 2012