The Mount Isa province in Northwest Queensland is a strongly mineralised Proterozoic inlier surrounded by Phanerozoic sedimentary basins which postdate the major basement mineral systems. So by understanding the distribution and thickness of the unmineralised sediments we can reduce uncertainty involved in exploration through cover.

The Eromanga and Carpentaria basins which flank the eastern portion of the inlier are comprised of carbonaceous marine mudstones and aquifers which eats signal from powered electromagnetic techniques reducing the range at which features can be detected through the cover. Magnetotellurics uses long record times of natural sources and can effectively see deeper into the earth, all the way down to the mantle if you leave it there for a couple of weeks, but in this case effectively through the Carpentaria basin.

CSIRO in collaboration with GSQ has successfully completed a suite of inversions of the recently completed Cloncurry Magnetotelluric survey, a magnetotelluric (MT) survey consisting of 978 soundings acquired over 2 campaigns in 2016 and 2020. The results consist in depth to basement probabilistic maps in the 3D space. This work will provide enhanced understanding in the Cloncurry survey area and a workflow which can be applied in other areas with conductive cover.

More information can be found at - https://geoscience.data.qld.gov.au/data/report/cr135660