Areas restricted from mining or exploration. Reserves emplaced by external agencies or authorities. If a lease application covers part or all of one of these areas, it must be referred to and approved by the agency which created the restriction.

Elevation is a greyscale layer with a histogram-equalised colour stretch. Cooler colours indicate lower values and warmer colours represent increasingly higher elevation. Elevation is derived from 5 metre LiDAR coverage of NSW and has been resampled to a uniform 25 metre grid cell size.

Pseudocolour image of the ratio between uranium and potassium within the upper 20 centimetres of the ground. This image was generated using normalised input grids to avoid ‘divide by zero’ errors. Cooler colours indicate lower abundances of uranium relative to potassium and warmer colours represent the opposite. Variations in U/K ratio are caused varied mineral compositions in host rocks and soils. This statewide image was generated by merging many individual airborne radiometric surveys.

Marine protected areas are parts of the NSW marine estate managed to conserve marine biodiversity and support marine science, recreation and education. The NSW system of marine protected areas includes: marine parks – six multiple use marine parks cover around one third (approximately 345,000 hectares) of the NSW marine estate aquatic reserves – 12 aquatic reserves cover around 2,000 hectares of the NSW marine estate national parks and nature reserves – include around 20,000 hectares of estuarine and oceanic habitats.

This is a preliminary low-resolution, pseudocolour image of airborne acquired Bouguer gravity with a histogram-equalised colour stretch. Cooler colours indicate lower Bouguer gravity values and warmer colours represent higher values. Bouguer gravity compensates for variations in latitude, 'free-air' elevation and Bouguer correction (assuming a crustal density of 2.67 T/m³). This image shows airborne gravity data from a survey that is ongoing. The Department of Customer Service has contracted two experienced specialist companies to fly the airborne survey. Final data will be available in 2024 at a higher resolution. Preliminary data should not be used in geological interpretations.

AEM curtains are a set of cross-sections generated using geophysical inversion to convert AEM data to conductivity (m/S) versus depth below surface (m). These data represent the conductivity of soil and rocks to a depth of about 400 m. A pseudocolour-stretch has been applied to the data. Blue represents low conductivity values and red represents high values. The colours vary due to; (1) natural variations in the electrical properties of soils, rocks, minerals and groundwater, (2) man-made structures, radio-transmissions and lightning strike and (3) AEM system artefacts.

The semi-transparent Bouguer gravity image is displayed using cooler colours (blue) to indicate lower gravity values and warmer colours (red) represent higher values. The underlying greyscale tilt-angle filtered total magnetic intensity image has been reduced to the pole (Tilt TMI RTP). The tilt-angle filter of the total magnetic intensity produces a local positive maximum (white) over a magnetic source and is zero near the edge of the source (grey), and is useful for tracing geological structure below variable depths of cover. Both image layers were generated using a histogram-equalised colour-stretch. Attention: Please ensure your version of the NSW gravity merges contains the date ‘2024-10-30’ in their filename. An update was made to remedy location errors in the initial release. Apologies for any inconvenience.

In 1994 the Lightning Ridge Mining Board determined that the title ‘Preserved Fields’ would be applied to older mining areas which would not be returned to their previous land use, adopting less strict rehabilitation standards.

This map layer shows the locations of in-stream water monitoring stations used by coal mining companies to monitor water quality in the Upper Hunter catchment. This information is provided by the coal companies as part of the Upper Hunter Mining Dialogue in cooperation with NSW Minerals Council and the community. A different coloured symbol is used for each coal company.

Pseudocolour image of the concentration of uranium in parts per million within in the upper 20 centimetres of the ground. Cooler colours indicate lower abundances of uranium and warmer colours represent higher abundances. Variations in uranium values are caused by varied mineral compositions in host rocks and soils. This statewide image was generated by merging many individual airborne radiometric surveys.