Sydney Basin hydrogeological inventory

This Sydney Basin dataset contains descriptive attribute information for the areas bounded by the relevant spatial groundwater feature in the associated Hydrogeology Index map. Descriptive topics are grouped into the following themes: Location and administration; Demographics; Physical geography; Surface water; Geology; Hydrogeology; Groundwater; Groundwater management and use; Environment; Land use and industry types; and Scientific stimulus.

The Sydney Basin, part of the Sydney–Gunnedah–Bowen basin system, consists of rocks dating from the Late Carboniferous to Middle Triassic periods. The basin's formation began with extensional rifting during the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian, leading to the creation of north-oriented half-grabens along Australia's eastern coast. A period of thermal relaxation in the mid Permian caused subsidence in the Bowen–Gunnedah–Sydney basin system, followed by thrusting of the New England Orogen from the Late Permian through the Triassic, forming a foreland basin. Deposition in the basin occurred in shallow marine, alluvial, and deltaic environments, resulting in a stratigraphic succession with syn-depositional folds and faults, mostly trending north to north-east.

The Lapstone Monocline and Kurrajong Fault separate the Blue Mountains in the west from the Cumberland Plain in the central part of the basin. The Sydney Basin contains widespread coal deposits classified into geographic coalfield areas, including the Southern, Central, Western, Newcastle, and Hunter coalfields. These coalfields are primarily hosted within late Permian strata consisting of interbedded sandstone, coal, siltstone, and claystone units. The coal-bearing formations are grouped based on sub-basins, namely the Illawarra, Tomago, Newcastle, and Wittingham coal measures, underlain by volcanic and marine sedimentary rocks. Deposition within the basin ceased during the Triassic, and post-depositional igneous intrusions (commonly of Jurassic age) formed sills and laccoliths in various parts of the basin. The maximum burial depths for the basin's strata occurred during the early Cretaceous, reaching around 2,000 to 3,000 metres. Subsequent tectonic activity associated with the Tasman Rift extension in the Late Cretaceous and compressional events associated with the convergence between Australia and Indonesia in the Neogene led to uplift and erosion across the basin.

These processes have allowed modern depositional environments to create small overlying sedimentary basins within major river valleys and estuaries, along the coast and offshore, and in several topographic depressions such as the Penrith, Fairfield and Botany basins in the area of the Cumberland Plain.

Identification info

Date (Creation): 2023-09-01

Date (Publication): 2023-09-28T07:21:34

Citation identifier: Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/148750

Citation identifier: Digital Object Identifier/https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/148750

Cited responsible party

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Publisher	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice

Purpose: A thematic summary of the Sydney Basin. Part of a compendium of consistently compiled summaries that comprise the National Hydrogeological Inventory

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Point of contact	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice
Point of contact	Carey, H.	MEG Internal Contact
Resource provider	Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division	External Contact

Spatial representation type

Topic category

Geoscientific information
Inland waters
Environment

Extent

Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

Resource format

Title: Product data repository: Various Formats

Website: 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

Land Use and Environmental Planning
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Environmental Management
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCE
Basin Analysis
EARTH SCIENCES
Sedimentology
ECOLOGY
Hydrogeology
Stratigraphy (incl. Biostratigraphy and Sequence Stratigraphy)
GEOLOGY

Project

National Groundwater Sytems

Theme

Groundwater

Theme

Exploring for the Future

Theme

National Hydrogeological Inventory

Keywords

Published_External

Resource constraints

Title: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title: CC-BY

Edition: 4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints: License

Use constraints: License

Other constraints: (c) Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2023

Resource constraints

Title: Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date: 2018-11-01T00:00:00

Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification: Unclassified

Language: English

Character encoding: UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact

Role	Organisation / Individual Name	Details
Distributor	Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)	Voice facsimile

OnLine resource: Download the report (pdf) [511 KB]

Download the report (pdf) [511 KB]

Distribution format

Resource lineage

Statement

This document for the National Hydrogeological Inventory was created through the compilation and analysis of various national geospatial datasets and a range of supporting scientific and technical literature. In most cases, the spatial boundary (polygon) for the region was sourced from the Geoscience Australia Geological Provinces 2018 dataset. The geospatial data reported for the region of interest were selected by spatial queries of the region's polygon using Geographic Information System (GIS) applications. A variety of national-scale datasets were assessed for each region, with these data relevant to the study of groundwater, hydrogeology and related social, cultural or environmental characteristics. These data are published by various organisations (mostly Australian Government entities) and include fundamental Australian datasets such as the National Groundwater Information System (NGIS), National Aquifer Framework, Atlas of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems and the Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database (CAPAD). A complete list of all data used to develop the National Hydrogeological Inventory, and the various data processing and analysis methods used, will be released as part of a future Geoscience Australia publication focused on the hydrogeological inventory methodology.

The document also contains written summary information about the geology, hydrogeology and related features of the region of interest. These narrative summaries were compiled by Geoscience Australia researchers based on literature review and analysis of a range of scientific and technical publications about the region. The reports use similar document templates to ensure the consistency of information provided across the entire Australian continent.