A Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration project has jointly won the inaugural Government Science Project of the Year category at the WA Premier’s Science Awards in November 2025.
The Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) project “Geochemically fingerprinting Western Australia’s next mineral discoveries” was recognised for the translation of government research into operational tools that reduce exploration risk and inform industry and policy decisions.
The geochemical fingerprinting program is led by Dr Hugh Smithies with a team of other geoscientists including Dr Jack Lowrey, Dr Alicia Verbeeten and Dr Anne Virnes. The program is funded predominantly through the State’s Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS).
The program creates consistent, reproducible multi‑element fingerprints (or barcodes) of known volcanic and sub-volcanic stratigraphy to compare and correlate against lesser understood stratigraphic packages, and alteration systems, across the Eastern Goldfields greenstone terranes.
This helps explorers working in areas of poor geological context, understand where in a stratigraphic sequence they are.
The data collected in the program is also leading to a greater understanding of how the ancient crust of the Yilgarn evolved. It is challenging and reshaping models of metal transport from the mantle and the pathways by which mantle‑derived melts and fluids deliver their metal cargos into the crust.
This new understanding of metal transport has significant global exploration value, as it helps explorers recognise fertile magmatic systems and vector toward deposits more efficiently. This has major implications for the discovery of new critical, strategic and precious metals that are required for the energy transition and the world’s ambitions to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
The program releases open and free GIS‑ready, machine‑readable datasets accompanied by interpretive notes documenting sampling strategy, analytical suites and data processing workflows.
Datasets and documentation for geochemical barcoding and Eastern Goldfields barcoding can be downloaded from the DMPE eBookshop.
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