<div>Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth and groundwater is crucial to maintaining the country’s population, economic activities, Indigenous culture and environmental values. Geoscience Australia is renewing a national-scale focus to tackle hydrogeological challenges by building upon our historic legacy in groundwater studies at regional and national scales.</div><div><br></div><div>The most comprehensive hydrogeological coverage of the nation is the 1987 Hydrogeology of Australia map, developed by a predecessor of Geoscience Australia. This map provides an overview of groundwater systems and principal aquifers across Australia, based upon the large sedimentary basins, intervening fractured rock areas and smaller overlying sedimentary/volcanic aquifers. However, the currency and completeness of the information presented and accompanying the national hydrogeology map needs to be improved. Updating the extents, data and scientific understanding of the hydrogeological regions across Australia, and improving the accessibility and useability of this information will address many of its current limitations.</div><div><br></div><div>Geoscience Australia, within its Exploring for the Future program, is compiling hydrogeological and related contextual information clearly and consistently across Australia’s major sedimentary basins and intervening fractured rock provinces. This information has been collected for 41 major hydrogeological regions spanning the continent: 36 sedimentary basins and 5 regions dominated by fractured-rock aquifers. The information, collected through a combination of geospatial analyses of national datasets and high-level summaries of scientific literature, will be presented through Geoscience Australia’s online data discovery portal, thereby enabling improved interrogation and integration with other web mapping services.</div><div><br></div><div>The new compilation of nationally consistent groundwater data and information will help to prioritise future investment for new groundwater research in specific regions or basins, inform the work programs of Geoscience Australia and influence the prioritisation of national hydrogeological research more broadly.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div>This Abstract was submitted/presented to the 2022 Australasian Groundwater Conference 21-23 November (https://agc2022.com.au/)

<div>Geoscience Australia, in partnership with Commonwealth, State and Territory governments is delivering national and regional groundwater investigations through the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) Program to support water management decisions. Geoscience Australia’s groundwater studies apply innovative geoscience tools and robust geoscientific workflows to increase knowledge and understanding of groundwater systems and assessment of groundwater resource potential for economies, communities and the environment.&nbsp;</div> This presentation was given at the 2022 Australasian Groundwater Conference 21-23 November (https://agc2022.com.au/)

<div>This document describes a series of experiments that grow student understanding of the concepts on porosity and permeability as it relates to groundwater. Sediments are used to substitute for sedimentary rocks and water movement through different types of sediment is evaluated. The document is split into two sections, background information for teachers and a 3 part experiment with activity sheet for students. The activities are suitable for use with secondary to senior secondary science and geography students.</div>

<div>In response to the acquisition of national-scale airborne electromagnetic surveys and the development of a national depth estimates database, a new workflow has been established to interpret airborne electromagnetic conductivity sections. This workflow allows for high quantities of high quality interpretation-specific metadata to be attributed to each interpretation line or point. The conductivity sections are interpreted in 2D space, and are registered in 3D space using code developed at Geoscience Australia. This code also verifies stratigraphic unit information against the national Australian Stratigraphic Units Database, and extracts interpretation geometry and geological data, such as depth estimates compiled in the Estimates of Geological and Geophysical Surfaces database. Interpretations made using this workflow are spatially consistent and contain large amounts of useful stratigraphic unit information. These interpretations are made freely-accessible as 1) text files and 3D objects through an electronic catalogue, 2) as point data through a point database accessible via a data portal, and 3) available for 3D visualisation and interrogation through a 3D data portal. These precompetitive data support the construction of national 3D geological architecture models, including cover and basement surface models, and resource prospectivity models. These models are in turn used to inform academia, industry and governments on decision-making, land use, environmental management, hazard mapping, and resource exploration.</div>

<div>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold a wealth of traditional knowledge about their land and waters gathered and passed down from observations over thousands of years. Geoscience Australia (GA) is the national geoscience public sector organisation that advises on the geology, hydrogeology, and geography of Australia by applying science and technology to describe and understand the Earth. Respectful and successful two-way engagement with Indigenous peoples provides an opportunity to identify and share traditional understanding, complementing geoscientific studies and preserving traditional knowledge. </div><div>Through its Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan, GA is committed to building mutually beneficial relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aligned with this vision, and as part of the Exploring for the Future Program, GA engaged a subject matter expert to undertake a scoping study. The aim of this study was to provide advice to strengthen the internal processes it uses to engage and undertake projects with Indigenous peoples. Drawing on two case studies (northeast NSW; eastern WA), a framework was developed to guide GA staff in the collection and recording of information and knowledge in a culturally appropriate manner. </div><div>The project also delivered a road map to achieve better engagement and inclusion of Indigenous peoples in geoscience studies, to be tested and refined in future work programs. The road map is built on six key elements: (1) increasing Indigenous employment; (2) building partnerships; (3) respecting timeframes; (4) embedding Indigenous values and culture; (5) adhering to ethical practices and principles; and (6) embracing two-way knowledge sharing. Trust is crucial to building a partnership with Indigenous communities, binding the six elements of the road map. </div><div>In the future GA hopes to share the outcomes with other organisations, from applying the framework and road map aimed at improving engagement with Indigenous peoples in groundwater activities and the geosciences more broadly.</div><div><br></div>

<div>The Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem (GDE) Atlas (Bureau of Meteorology, 2019) is a well-known national product that has been utilised for a wide range of applications including environmental impact statements, water planning and research. A complementary GDE dataset, Groundwater Dependent Waterbodies (GDW), has been produced from Digital Earth Australia (DEA) national data products. This new GDW ArcGIS dataset is spatially aligned with Landsat satellite-derived products, enabling ready integration with other spatial data to map and characterise GDEs across the continent.</div><div><br></div><div>The DEA Water Observations Multi Year Statistics (Mueller et al. 2016; DEA 2019) and the DEA Waterbodies (version 2) data product (Kraus et al., 2021; DEA Waterbodies, 2022) have been combined with the national GDE Atlas to produce the GDW dataset which delineates surface waterbodies that are known and/or high potential aquatic GDEs. The potential of a GDE relates to the confidence that the mapped feature is a GDE, where known GDEs have been mapped from regional studies and high potential GDEs identified from regional or national studies (Nation et al., 2017). The GDW dataset are aquatic GDE waterbodies, including springs, rivers, lakes and wetlands, which rely on a surface expression of groundwater to meet some or all of their water requirements. </div><div><br></div><div>The DEA Water Observation Multi Year Statistics, based on Collection 3 Landsat satellite imagery, shows the percentage of wet observations in the landscape relative to the total number of clear observations since 1986. DEA Waterbodies identifies the locations of waterbodies across Australia that are present for greater than 10% of the time and are larger than 2700m2 (3 Landsat pixels) in size. These waterbodies include GDEs and non-GDEs (e.g. surface water features not reliant on groundwater, such as dams). Where known/high potential GDEs in the GDE Atlas intersected a DEA waterbody, the entire waterbody polygon was assigned as a potential GDW, resulting in 55,799 waterbodies in the GDW dataset. Conversely, any GDEs not classified as known/high potential GDEs in the Atlas, due to a lack of data, are not included in the GDW product. Even though this method should remove dams from the GDW dataset (assuming they have been assigned appropriately in the GDE Atlas), due to spatial misalignment some may still be included that are not potential GDEs. Furthermore, surface water features that are too small to be detected by Landsat satellite data will be excluded from the GDW dataset.</div><div><br></div><div>The GDW polygons were attributed with the spatial summary of maximum, median, mean and minimum percentages for pixels within each GDW, derived from the DEA Water Observation Multi Year Statistics i.e. maximum/minimum pixel value or median/mean across all pixels in the GDW. This attribute enables comparison between GDWs of the proportion of time they have surface water observed. An additional attribute was added to the GDW dataset to indicate amount of overlap between waterbodies and aquatic GDEs in the GDE Atlas.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>An ESRI dataset, AquaticGDW.gdb, and a variety of national ArcGIS layer files have been produced using the spatial summary statistics in the GDW dataset.</div><div>These provide a first-pass representation of known/high potential aquatic GDEs and their surface water persistence, derived consistently from Landsat satellite imagery across Australia.</div><div><br></div><div><strong>References:</strong></div><div> </div><div>Bureau of Meteorology, 2019. <em>Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems Atlas</em>. http://www.bom.gov.au/water/groundwater/gde/index.shtml </div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>DEA Water Observations Statistics, 2019. https://cmi.ga.gov.au/data-products/dea/686/dea-water-observations-statistics-landsat</div><div><br></div><div>DEA Waterbodies, 2022. https://www.dea.ga.gov.au/products/dea-waterbodies</div><div><br></div><div>Krause, C.E., Newey, V., Alger, M.J., and Lymburner, L., 2021. Mapping and Monitoring the Multi-Decadal Dynamics of Australia’s Open Waterbodies Using Landsat, <em>Remote Sensing</em>, 13(8), 1437. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081437</div><div><br></div><div>Mueller, N., Lewis, A., Roberts, D., Ring, S., Melrose, R., Sixsmith, J., Lymburner, L., McIntyre, A., Tan, P., Curnow, S. and Ip, A., 2016. Water observations from space: Mapping surface water from 25 years of Landsat imagery across Australia. <em>Remote Sensing of Environment</em>, 174, 341-352, ISSN 0034-4257.</div><div><br></div><div>Nation, E.R., Elsum, L., Glanville, K., Carrara, E. and Elmahdi, A., 2017. Updating the Atlas of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems in response to user demand, 22nd International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Hobart, Tasmania, mssanz.org.au/modsim2017</div>

<div>This report details results and methodology from two hydrochemistry sampling programs performed as part of Geoscience Australia’s Musgrave Palaeovalley Project. The Musgrave Palaeovalley Project is a data acquisition and scientific investigation program based around the central west of Australia. It is aimed at investigating groundwater processes and resources within the Cenozoic fill and palaeovalleys of the region. This project, and many others, have been performed as part of the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program, an eight-year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and precompetitive information acquisition program.</div><div>Data released here is from 18 bores sampled for groundwater and tested for a range of analytes including field parameters, major and minor elements, isotopes and trace gases. The sampling methods, quality assurance/quality control procedures, analytical methods and results are included in this report.</div>

<div>Previous work by the SA government and CSIRO[i] highlighted the value of integrating AEM data with other geological and hydrogeological data to model palaeovalley groundwater systems and develop regional hydrogeological conceptualisations. This allows better-informed water supply decisions and management for communities in remote parts of Australia where these systems provide the only available and long-term water resource. The Exploring for the Future Musgrave Palaeovalley module seeks to apply similar work flows across the western Musgrave Province and adjacent Officer and Canning basins.</div><div>Open file mineral exploration AEM data from 11 surveys in WA and SA flown between 2009 and 2012 were re-processed and inverted to produce conductivity models and a suite of derived datasets. Geoscience Australia’s Layered-Earth-Inversion was used as a single standard processing and inversion method to improve continuity and data quality.</div><div>These legacy AEM data, originally for mineral exploration, have been incorporated with DEM-derived landscape attributes, previous palaeovalley mapping and available bore lithologies to model palaeovalley base surfaces. This presentation will provide an example from four blocks of AEM data to show how repurposing data from mineral exploration, public bore data and landscape analysis can be used to identify palaeovalley systems which provide critical water supplies for remote and regional communities and industry[ii].</div><div>This approach can be used to model palaeovalley systems from a range of geoscientific and other datasets. The Exploring for the Future Musgrave Palaeovalley module has acquired ~23,000 line km of AEM across parts of WA and the NT at line spacings of 1 and 5 km. This new precompetitive data will be used to model palaeovalley system geometry and integrate with new and existing AEM, drilling, landscape, groundwater chemistry and surface geophysics data to test hydrogeological conceptualisations of these groundwater systems.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> [i] Costar, A., Love, A., Krapf, C., Keppel, M., Munday, T., Inverarity, K., Wallis, I. &&nbsp;Sørensen, C. (2019). Hidden water in remote areas – using innovative exploration to uncover the past in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. MESA Journal 90(2), 23 - 35 pp.</div><div>Krapf, C., Costar, A., Stoian, L., Keppel, M., Gordon, G., Inverarity, K., Love, A. &&nbsp;Munday, T. (2019). A sniff of the ocean in the Miocene at the foothills of the Musgrave Ranges - unravelling the evolution of the Lindsay East Palaeovalley. MESA Journal 90(2), 4 - 22 pp.</div><div>Krapf, C. B. E., Costar, A., Munday, T., Irvine, J. A. & Ibrahimi, T., 2020. Palaeovalley map of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (1st edition), 1:500 000 scale. Goyder Institute for Water Research, Geological Survey of South Australia, CSIRO.</div><div>https://sarigbasis.pir.sa.gov.au/WebtopEw/ws/samref/sarig1/wci/Record?r=0&m=1&w=catno=2042122. </div><div>Munday, T., Taylor, A., Raiber, M., Sørensen, C., Peeters, L. J. M., Krapf, C., Cui, T., Cahill, K., Flinchum, B., Smolanko, N., Martinez, J., Ibrahimi, T. &&nbsp;Gilfedder, M., 2020a. Integrated regional hydrogeophysical conceptualisation of the Musgrave Province, South Australia, Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report Series 20/04, Goyder Institute for Water Research, Adelaide.</div><div>Munday, T., Gilfedder, M., Costar, A., Blaikie, T., Cahill, K., Cui, T., Davis, A., Deng, Z., Flinchum, B., Gao, L., Gogoll, M., Gordon, G., Ibrahimi, T., Inverarity, K., Irvine, J., Janardhanan, Sreekanth, Jiang, Z., Keppel, M., Krapf, C., Lane, T., Love, A., Macnae, J., Mariethoz, G., Martinez, J., Pagendam, D., Peeters, L., Pickett, T., Robinson, N., Siade, A., Smolanko, N., Sorensen, C., Stoian, L., Taylor, A., Visser, G., Wallis, I. &&nbsp;Xie, Y., 2020b. Facilitating Long-term Outback Water Solutions (G-Flows Stage 3): Final Summary Report. Goyder Institute for Water Research, Adelaide, http://hdl.handle.net/102.100.100/376125?index=1. </div><div>[ii] Symington, N. J., Ley-Cooper, Y. A. &&nbsp;Smith, M. L., 2022. West Musgrave AEM conductivity models and data release. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/146278.&nbsp;</div> This Abstract was submitted/presented to the 2022 Sub 22 Conference 28-30 November (http://sub22.w.tas.currinda.com/)

<div>Reliable water availability is critical to supporting communities and industries such as mining, agriculture and tourism. In remote and arid areas such as in the Officer – Musgrave region of central Australia, groundwater is the only viable source of water for human and environmental use. Groundwater systems in remote regions such as the Musgrave Province are poorly understood due to sparse geoscientific data and few detailed scientific investigations. The Musgrave palaeovalley module will improve palaeovalley groundwater system understanding in the Musgrave Province and adjacent basins to identify potential water sources for communities in the region. This report summarises the state of knowledge for the region on the landscape, population, water use, geology and groundwater systems. An analysis of the current and potential future water needs under different development scenarios captures information on how water is used in an area covering three jurisdictions and several potentially competing land uses.</div><div>The Musgrave Palaeovalley study area is generally flat, low-lying desert country. The Musgrave, Petermann, Mann and Warburton ranges in the centre of the area are a significant change in elevation and surface materials, comprising rocky hills, slopes and mountains with up to 800&nbsp;m of relief above the sand plains. Vegetation is generally bare or sparse, with isolated pockets of grassy or woody shrub lands. Soils are typically Tenosols, Rudosols and Kandosols.</div><div><br></div><div>There are four main hydrogeological systems in the study area. These are the fractured and basement rocks, local Quaternary sediments regional sedimentary basins and palaeovalley aquifers. These systems are likely to be hydraulically connected. Within palaeovalleys, three main hydrostratigraphic units occur. The upper Garford Formation is a sandy unconfined aquifer with a clay rich base (lower Garford Formation) which acts as a partial aquitard where present. The Pidinga Formation represents a coarser sandy or gravelly channel base, which is partly confined by the lower Garford Formation aquitard. The aquifers are likely to be hydraulically connected on a regional scale. Further to the west, equivalent units are identified and named in palaeovalley systems on the Yilgarn Craton. </div><div><br></div><div>Groundwater is recharged by episodic, high-intensity rainfall events and mostly discharges via evapotranspiration. Recharge is higher around the ranges, and lower over the flatter sand plains. Palaeovalley aquifers likely receive some groundwater inflow from underlying basin systems and fractured rock systems. Regional groundwater movement is topographically controlled, moving from the ranges towards surrounding areas of lower elevation. In some palaeovalleys groundwater discharges at playa lakes. Water table gradients are very low. More groundwater isotope and tracer data is required to understand potential connectivity between basin, fractured rock and palaeovalley systems.</div><div>Groundwater quality is brackish to saline, although pockets of fresher groundwater occur close to recharge areas and within the deeper and coarse-grained Garford Formation. Groundwater resources generally require treatment prior to use Most groundwater in the region is suitable for stock use. </div><div><br></div><div>Existing palaeovalley mapping is restricted to inferring extents based on landscape position and mapped surface materials. Utilising higher resolution digital elevation models and more recently acquired remotely sensed data will refine mapped palaeovalley extents. Improving the modelling of the distribution and depth of palaeovalleys in greater detail across the region is best aided through interpretation of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data.</div><div>Based on the successes of integrating AEM with other geoscientific data in South Australia, we have acquired 25,109 line km of new AEM across the WA and NT parts of our study area. We will integrate this data with reprocessed and inverted publicly available AEM data, existing borehole information, existing and newly acquired hydrochemical data, and new surface magnetic resonance data to model the three dimensional distribution of palaeovalleys in the study area. We will use these models and data as the basis for conceptualising the hydrogeology of the palaeovalley systems, and provide information back to local communities and decision-makers to inform water management decisions. The data will also provide valuable precompetitive information for future economic development in the region.</div><div><br></div>

<div>The Exploring for the Future program is a world leading program, delivering public geoscientific data and information required to empower decision-makers and attract future investment in resource exploration and development. Geoscience Australia engaged Alluvium Consulting Australia to quantify the impact and value of groundwater activities and outputs to the quadruple bottom line through an evaluation of 2 case studies, namely: • National Hydrogeological Mapping • The Southern Stuart Corridor project. This involved understanding the impact pathways for these case studies and the collection of data to be used in a cost benefit analysis. The work sought to provide feedback to Geoscience Australia, stakeholder groups and the broader community on the value of Geoscience Australia’s groundwater activities. The case study evaluations were facilitated by a series of specific questions, which were developed to guide data collection and the building of a knowledge base around the impact and value of the work in each case study and associated outputs. The questions broadly fell under the following categories: 1. Uptake and Usage 2. Impact 3. Benefit These evaluations were framed around the program impact pathway developed for each case study. This is a description of how inputs are used to deliver activities, which in turn result in outcomes and impacts (changes) for stakeholders, including the environment. The primary means of data collection to help answer the key evaluation questions was through online workshops and interviews with key stakeholders for each case study. These were undertaken between March 10 and March 24, 2023. In these workshops and interviews, representatives from industry, community and government agencies were asked if they could identify instances where case study program outputs were used for particular purposes, such as prioritising research or investment, advising Members of Parliament, or education and training. These examples were then explored further to understand what outcomes and benefits were derived from the use of the case study outputs, and how critical were the case study outputs to achieving those outcomes and benefits</div>