Inter-disciplinary, multi-physics, multi-scale approaches for groundwater system investigations and hydrogeological assessments in Northern Australia: The Exploring for the Future Groundwater Program

The development of Northern Australia has been identified as an Australian national priority, with water availability being fundamental to economic development. Surface water options are limited hence identification of new groundwater resources and water banking options is essential. Over the past 4 years, Geoscience Australia, in concert with State and Territory partners, has been involved in groundwater investigations across northern Australia, including ‘frontier’ sedimentary basins and paleovalleys within priority infrastructure ‘fairways’, as well as national-scale investigations. New data acquisition has included multi-scale airborne electromagnetics surveys; LiDAR surveys; drilling; bore testing; ground geophysics (e.g. surface nuclear magnetic resonance, seismic reflection); borehole geophysics; hydrochemical and hydrodynamic analysis; age dating of water and landscape materials; and mapping (geomorphic, morphotectonic, regolith, geological and hydrological). The program also includes assessment of national to catchment scale water balance through use of satellite gravity, InSAR, GPS data and Digital Earth Australia products. A multi-physics, multi-scale, inter-disciplinary approach has been critical in enabling the rapid identification and assessment of significant new potential fresh groundwater resources and MAR options within tectonically inverted sedimentary basins in the Kimberley Region (Fitzroy Basin (WA)) and Bonaparte Basin (WA and NT); Western Davenport Wiso Basin (NT); and Southern Georgina Basin (NT). The program has also helped define: the extents of groundwater resources near Alice Springs (NT); aquifer compartmentalisation in the Daly Basin and at Howards East (NT); near-surface faults in the Surat and Galilee Basins; groundwater resources in 6 remote communities (NT); and groundwater resources in the Tennant Creek area, Ti Tree Basin; and more broadly across northern Australia in Cenozoic paleovalleys and Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Tertiary sedimentary basins. Project data and value-added products inform groundwater numerical modelling and hydrogeological assessments. Program outputs are being used to underpin water allocation planning and investment decisions in agriculture, community water supplies and regional industries. Presented at the 2019 Australasian Groundwater Conference (AGC 2019)