Using regional airborne electromagnetic conductivity data to characterise surface water groundwater interaction in the Cooper Creek floodplain in arid central eastern Australia

Authors / CoAuthors

Abstract

<div> Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data has been acquired at 20km line spacing across much of the Australian continent and conductivity models generated by inverting these data are freely available. Despite the wide line spacing these data are suitable for imaging the near surface and better understanding groundwater systems. Twenty-kilometre spaced AEM data acquired over the Cooper Creek floodplain using a fixed-wing towed system were inverted using deterministic and probabilistic methods. The Cooper Creek is an anabranching ephemeral river system in arid eastern central Australia. We integrated conductivity data with a range of surface and subsurface data to characterise the hydrogeology of the region and infer groundwater salinity from the shallow alluvial aquifer across a more than 14,000 km2 Cooper Creek floodplain. The conductivity data also revealed several examples of focused recharge through a river channel forming a freshwater lens within the more regional shallow saline groundwater system.</div><div> </div><div>This work demonstrates that regional AEM conductivity data can be a valuable tool for understanding groundwater processes at various scales with implications for how to responsibly manage water resources. This work is especially important in the Australian context where high quality borehole data is typically sparse, but high-quality geophysical and satellite data are often accessible.</div><div> </div> This presentation was given to the 8th International Airborne Electromagnetics Workshop (AEM2023) (https://www.aseg.org.au/news/aem-2023)

Product Type

document

eCat Id

147716

Contact for the resource

Resource provider

Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Cnr Jerrabomberra Ave and Hindmarsh Dr GPO Box 378
Canberra
ACT
2601
Australia

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Contact instructions: MEG

Keywords

( Project )

National Groundwater Systems

groundwater

airborne electromagnetics

recharge

salinity

Cooper Creek

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

Electrical and electromagnetic methods in geophysics

Published_External

Publication Date

2023-10-23T04:13:15

Creation Date

2023-02-15T07:00:00

Security Constraints

Australian Government Security Classification System

Classification - unclassified

Legal Constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

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Status

completed

Purpose

This extended abstract is a submission for the AEM 2023 conference in far north Queensland. It describes ongoing work using regional AEM and all other useful data to charactersie groundwater surface water interaction on the Cooper Creek floodplain.

Maintenance Information

asNeeded

Topic Category

geoscientificInformation

Series Information

8th International Airborne Electromagnetics Workshop (AEM2023) 4-8 September 2023 Fitzroy Island, QLD

Lineage

<div>This abstract was written based on ongoing work for the National Groundwater System project on groundwater systems within the Lake Eyre Basin. The abstract has been edited based on input from coauthors. The AEM data on which this work was heavily based can be downloaded from ecat (https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/api/records/145744).</div>

Parent Information

Extents

[-28.2319, -24.8762, 143.4602, 141.1489]

Reference System

Spatial Resolution

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Link to Conference Page

Link to Short Abstracts (Preview)

Link to Extended Abstract

Download Presentation (pptx) [42.1 MB]

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