• 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

Digital Object Identifier

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Publisher

Australian Geological Survey Organisation - AGSO

External Contact
Author

English, P.

External Contact
Name

Report

Issue identification

Library Reference - BMR 551 (942.91) ENG.3 copy 4

Purpose

Unknown - Legacy product

Status
Completed
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Spatial representation type
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

Extent

N
S
E
W


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
  • EARTH SCIENCES

Keywords
  • GA Publication

Keywords
  • monograph

Keywords
  • geology

Keywords
  • AU-NT

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 1998

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 Report (pdf) [49.5 MB]

Download Report (pdf) [49.5 MB]

Distribution format
  • pdf

    File decompression technique

    nil

Resource lineage

Statement

Unknown - Legacy product

Metadata 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

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/cddc825a-2cd1-4843-8a3d-709527fddf47

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
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

AGSO Report

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/61352

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/5167d912-6784-4371-9938-3931e84ca6f1

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/cddc825a-2cd1-4843-8a3d-709527fddf47

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/ofmJ3/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/cddc825a-2cd1-4843-8a3d-709527fddf47

Date info (Creation)
2019-04-08T01:55:29
Date info (Revision)
2019-04-08T01:55:29

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

AU-NT GA Publication geology monograph
theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
EARTH SCIENCES

Provided by

Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


  •  
  •  
  •