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Towards prioritising regional groundwater assessments using the national hydrogeological inventory of Australia

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Geoscience Australia's Exploring for the Future Program (EFTF) is supporting regional and national-scale initiatives to address Australia’s hydrogeological challenges using an integrated geoscience systems approach. An important early step in the EFTF groundwater program focused on developing a national hydrogeological inventory of Australia’s major groundwater basins and fractured rock provinces. The inventory has its roots in the seminal 1987 Hydrogeology of Australia map, the first continental-scale map of groundwater systems and principal aquifers (Jacobson and Lau, 1987). Seeking to enhance and modernise the supporting information base for the national map, the inventory combines a curated selection of geospatial data attributes supported by focused narrative on the geology and hydrogeology of each basin and fractured rock province.   The national hydrogeological inventory has a broad range of benefits for Australian groundwater users, managers and policy makers. These include the provision of an updated knowledge base covering the hydrogeology and groundwater systems of the major hydrogeological provinces of the nation, as well as important contextual information. The extensive catalogue of knowledge contained in the inventory also enables an objective approach to identify and prioritise areas for further regional assessment.   Based on analysis of data compiled for the national inventory, the Lake Eyre Basin in arid central Australia was the first region prioritised for more detailed hydrogeological assessment during EFTF. The integration of a variety of basin- to national-scale geoscience datasets enabled significant advances in geological and hydrogeological understanding and the development of a new geological model for the three main basin depo-centres, namely the Tirari and Callabonna Sub-basins, and the Cooper Creek Palaeovalley. The geological modelling has further supported a range of hydrogeological applications, including substantial improvements in the number of bores with aquifer attribution, as well as the first regional watertable map across the basin.

Abstract submitted and presented at the 2023 AGC NZHS Joint Conference Auckland, NZ (https://www.agcnzhs2023conference.co.nz/)

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Field Value
Title Towards prioritising regional groundwater assessments using the national hydrogeological inventory of Australia
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/09dc9fe3-4da4-458d-9b10-61b03d0e84b9
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 11/12/2023
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Towards prioritising regional groundwater assessments using the national hydrogeological inventory of Australia". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/towards-prioritising-regional-groundwater-assessments-using-the-national-hydrogeological-invent