Geoscience Australia
Encyclopedia
Geoscience Australia is an agency
Government agency
A government or state agency is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an intelligence agency. There is a notable variety of agency types...

 of the Australian federal government
Government of Australia
The Commonwealth of Australia is a federal constitutional monarchy under a parliamentary democracy. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 as a result of an agreement among six self-governing British colonies, which became the six states...

. It carries out geoscientific research.

On a user pays
User pays
User pays, or beneficiary pays, is a pricing approach based on the idea that the most efficient allocation of resources occurs when consumers pay the full cost of the goods that they consume. In public finance it stands with another principle of "ability to pay," which states that those who have...

 basis it produces geospatial products such as topographic maps and satellite imagery
Satellite imagery
Satellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made by means of artificial satellites.- History :The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds...

.

History

The agency was first established in 1946 as the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics (BMR) to provide geological and geophysical maps of Australia to underpin mineral exploration.

In 1992, the name changed to Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO).

In 2001, reflecting a shift to geoscience information for petroleum and minerals, the organisation’s name was changed again, to AGSO-Geoscience Australia. Later that year, with the addition of the Australian Surveying and Land Information Group (AUSLIG), the name shifted again to Geoscience Australia.

Facilities

It has a free place name search and its earthquake monitoring services can be freely accessed.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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