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A national-scale vulnerability assessment of seawater intrusion: Vulnerability Factor Analysis

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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Fresh groundwater stored in Australian coastal aquifers constitutes an important resource for humans and the natural environment. However, many Australian coastal aquifers are vulnerable to seawater intrusion (SWI) - the landward encroachment of seawater into coastal aquifers. SWI can significantly degrade water quality and reduce freshwater availability. In response to the threat posed by SWI, Geoscience Australia (GA) and the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), in collaboration with state and territory water agencies, have undertaken a national scale assessment of the vulnerability of coastal aquifers to SWI. This assessment aims to identify the coastal groundwater resources that are most vulnerable to SWI and considers the future consequences of over-extraction, sea-level rise, and recharge-discharge variations associated with climate change. In order to achieve the project aims, the study comprised five technical assessments to analyse factors contributing to the vulnerability of coastal aquifers: (i) vulnerability factor analysis (VFA); (ii) coastal aquifer typology; (iii) mathematical analysis; (iv) SWI quantitative and qualitative vulnerability indexing; and, (v) future land surface inundation and population growth analysis. This report covers the VFA component of the project which provides a first-pass, regional assessment of SWI vulnerability indicators in Australia's coastal areas based on state and territory groundwater datasets for individual groundwater bores. A large number of measurements were collated for this project. In total, more than 1.7 million groundwater levels and more than 1.1 million salinity measurements were compiled and evaluated.

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Field Value
Title A national-scale vulnerability assessment of seawater intrusion: Vulnerability Factor Analysis
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/16550300-394a-4331-8515-40d57861dd28
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "A national-scale vulnerability assessment of seawater intrusion: Vulnerability Factor Analysis". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/a-national-scale-vulnerability-assessment-of-seawater-intrusion-vulnerability-factor-analysis