By listening to the Earth, we can hear her speak to us. That is why geophysicists have their ears to the ground.
Our 'ears' can include sensitive instruments like seismometers, which measure earthquakes and allow us to investigate stress in the crust, risks and changes caused by human activity, and gravity meters and magnetometers, which measure the fields around the Earth and allow us to image its structure and potential for various Earth resources.
The Geophysics and Geodynamics Cluster research program aligns with eleven of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. We add value to society and the economy by conducting fundamental and applied research into the structure and dynamics of the solid Earth.
Our investigative focus
- The physical and thermal structure and evolution of the crust, mantle, and core
- Characteristics of geophysical and geodynamical processes
- Earthquake physics and disaster risk reduction
- Critical resource (minerals, groundwater, and geothermal energy) exploration
- The development of geophysical monitoring infrastructure.
Our scope extends across length-scales ranging from millimetres to tectonic plates, radial depths extending from the surface to the inner core, and time scales spanning from seconds to geologic periods.
Our expertise and tools include seismology, geothermics, potential field methods (gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic), radiometrics, reflection seismic methods, petrophysics, and geodynamics and we use state-of-the-art field/laboratory geophysical instruments and high-performance computing.
AuScope Australian Geophysical Observing System subsurface observatory program
The School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences also hosts the AuScope Australian Geophysical Observing System subsurface observatory program, which is acquiring and deploying a variety of geophysical monitoring tools around the country with a particular focus on monitoring the accessible crust.
The AGOS Petrophysics lab is based here and includes a GeoTech Multi Scanner Core Logger capable of measuring continuous density, p-wave velocity, magnetic susceptibility, electrical conductivity and natural gamma logs of drill core. The lab also contains numerous thermal conductivity instruments and scanners.