Product catalogue
Geoscience for Land and Water Management: Cainozoic geology and hydrogeology of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory
Integrated datasets (airborne magnetic and gamma-ray spectrometric imagery, Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery, a digital elevation model, and water-bore logs) have contributed to an investigation of Cainozoic geology and hydrogeology, and their ecological impact on the habitat of a vulnerable species of marsupial, in a -2600-km2 area of semiarid central Australia in and around the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. They show that a heterogeneous basement topography of domes and basins with 100 m of vertical relief (a buried 'mini-Kata Tjuta') underlies the Dune Plains, an extensive tongue-shaped sand plain between Kata Tjuta, Uluru, and Yulara.
A significant feature of this buried landscape is a palaeodrainage valley, now the setting for a compound bedrock-Cainozoic-sediment aquifer system which is a major source of water supply for the inhabitants and tourists of this World Heritage Area. Major faults traverse the basement beneath the Dune Plains area, and a local elevation of bedrock causes a subsurface constriction near Yulara; both these features are important aquifer influences. The palaeovalley was originally a closed valley with discrete depocentres in which lacustrine and alluvial-fan sediments accumulated. Later, a river evolved, and flowed north to Lake Amadeus, not eastward as previously mapped. North of Yulara the palaeoriver spread out in a broad deltaic braid plain to the lake. The braid plain has received recent episodic floodwaters that have disrupted the Quaternary dunefields.
Groundwater calcrete, and a sheetwash landscape unit composed of red earth, are important Quaternary geological units. The sheetwash landscape unit forms broad, gently sloping aprons around outcrops and supports banded mulga shrub land. During rainfall, surface run-off from this unit constitutes a distinctive 'sheetflow recharge' mechanism that maximises water conservation and infiltration for the underlying aquifer.
The sheetwash landscape unit appears to have an important bearing on the ecosystem of the mulgara, a vulnerable marsupial that inhabits the Dune Plains. Whereas mulgara populations elsewhere in the Park contract during droughts, the Dune Plains population historically has survived. The transitional zone between the sheetwash red earth-mulga shrubland and the adjacent sandplain-spinifex association coincides with this core mulgara habitat. The hydrodynamic processes of the sheetwash unit carry concentrated nutrients to this zone, at the base of the slope, where infiltration occurs; these processes may be favourable to the mulgara's survival in the Dune Plains.
Research into the soil, water, and nutrient cycles and processes in the sheetwash red earth-mulga shrubland and its adjacent transitional zone is recommended because of the interpreted importance of the surface and near-surface hydrodynamics to the distinctive ecosystem and to the recharge of the aquifer system. Further investigation of the locally complex hydrogeology is required, and a review of the groundwater resources in the Dune Plains aquifer system is recommended.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 1998-01-01
- Date (Publication)
- 2024-05-16T03:05:58
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/61352
Identifier
- Codespace
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Digital Object Identifier
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Publisher Australian Geological Survey Organisation - AGSO
External Contact Author English, P.
External Contact
- Name
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Report
- Issue identification
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Library Reference - BMR 551 (942.91) ENG.3 copy 4
- Purpose
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Unknown - Legacy product
- Status
- Completed
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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EARTH SCIENCES
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- Keywords
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GA Publication
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monograph
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- Keywords
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geology
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- Keywords
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AU-NT
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- Keywords
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
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4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
- Other constraints
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(c) Commonwealth of Australia 1998
Resource constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice facsimile
- OnLine resource
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Download Report (pdf) [49.5 MB]
Download Report (pdf) [49.5 MB]
- Distribution format
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pdf
- File decompression technique
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nil
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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Unknown - Legacy product
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
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urn:uuid/cddc825a-2cd1-4843-8a3d-709527fddf47
- Title
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GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Owner Rowland, J
Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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AGSO Report
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/61352
- Date info (Creation)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
- Date info (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551