This web service provides access to geological, hydrogeological and hydrochemical digital datasets that have been published by Geoscience Australia for the Great Artesian Basin (GAB).

Recent national and state assessments have concluded that sedimentary formations that underlie or are within the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) may be suitable for the storage of greenhouse gases. These same formations contain methane and naturally generated carbon dioxide that has been trapped for millions of years. The Queensland government has released exploration permits for Greenhouse Gas Storage in the Bowen and Surat basins. An important consideration in assessing the potential economic, environmental, health and safety risks of such projects is the potential impact CO2 migrating out of storage reservoirs could have on overlying groundwater resources. The risk and impact of CO2 migrating from a greenhouse gas storage reservoir into groundwater cannot be objectively assessed without knowledge of the natural baseline characteristics of the groundwater within these systems. Due to the phase behaviour of CO2, geological storage of carbon dioxide in the supercritical state requires depths greater than 800m, but there are no hydrochemical studies of such deeper aquifers in the prospective storage areas. Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Queensland (GSQ), Queensland Department of Mines and Energy, worked collaboratively under the National Geoscience Agreement (NGA) to characterise the regional hydrochemistry of the Denison Trough and Surat Basin and trialled different groundwater monitoring strategies. The output from this Project constitutes part of a regional baseline reference set for future site-specific and semi-regional monitoring and verification programmes conducted by geological storage proponents. The dataset provides a reference of hydrochemistry for future competing resource users.

This service provides access to hydrochemistry data (groundwater and surface water analyses) obtained from water samples collected from Australian water bores or field sites.

<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>

The greater Eromanga Basin is an intracratonic Mesozoic basin covering an area of approximately 2,000,000 km2 in central and eastern Australia. The greater Eromanga Basin encompasses three correlated basins: the Eromanga Basin (central and western regions), Surat Basin (eastern region) and the Carpentaria Basin (northern region). The greater Eromanga Basin hosts Australia's largest known resources of groundwater as well as major onshore hydrocarbon resources, including significant coal bed methane (CBM) that has been discovered in recent years, and also contains extensive hot-sedimentary aquifer geothermal energy systems. Additionally, the basin has potential as a greenhouse gas sequestration site and will likely play a key role in securing Australia's energy future. Finally, although no major metallic mineral deposits are currently known in the greater Eromanga Basin, there is significant potential for undiscovered uranium mineralisation. A 3D geological map has been constructed for the greater Eromanga Basin using publicly available datasets. These are principally drilling datasets (i.e. water bores; mineral and petroleum exploration wells) and the 1:1,000,000 scale Surface Geology Map of Australia. Geophysical wireline logs, hydrochemistry, radiometrics, magnetic and gravity datasets were also integrated into the 3D geological map. This study has highlighted the potential of the southwest margin of the Eromanga Basin and the Euroka arch region to contain sandstone-hosted uranium mineral systems. The report demonstrates how incorporating disparate datasets in a 3D geological map can generate an integrated mapping solution with diverse applications: 1. Provide new insights into the geology and geodynamic evolution of the basin. 2. Identify hydrocarbon resource plays. 3. Assess the basin's mineral potential (e.g., sandstone-hosted uranium mineral systems). 4. Assess the basin's geothermal potential (e.g., hot-sedimentary aquifer geothermal systems). 5. Provide resource management information (e.g., groundwater). 6. Identify potential contaminants in groundwater.

Poster prepared for International Association of Hydrogeologists Congress 2013 Surface-groundwater interactions are often poorly understood. This is particularly true of many floodplain landscapes in Australia, where there is limited mapping of recharge and discharge zones along the major river systems, and only generalised quantification of hydrological fluxes based on widely spaced surface gauging stations. This is compounded by a lack of temporal data, with poor understanding of how surface-groundwater interactions change under different rainfall, river flow and flood regimes. In this study, high resolution LiDAR, in-river sonar, and airborne electromagnetic (AEM) datasets (validated by drilling) have been integrated to produce detailed 3-dimensional mapping that combines surface geomorphology and hydrogeology. This mapping enables potential recharge zones in the river and adjacent landscape to be identified and assessed under different flow regimes. These potential recharge zones and groundwater flow pathways were then compared against the spatial distribution of discontinuities in near-surface and deeper aquitard layers derived from the AEM interpretation. These 3D mapping constructs provide a framework for considering groundwater processes. Hydrochemistry data, allied with hydraulic data from a bore monitoring network, demonstrate the importance of recharge during significant flood events. In many places, the AEM data also affirm the spatial association between fresher groundwater resources and sites of river and floodplain leakage. At a more localised scale, hydrogeochemical data allows discrimination of lateral and vertical fluxes. Overall, this integrated approach provides an important conceptual framework to constrain hydrogeological modelling, and assessments of sustainable yield. The constructs are also invaluable in targeting and assessing managed aquifer recharge (MAR) options.

This web service provides access to geological, hydrogeological and hydrochemical digital datasets that have been published by Geoscience Australia for the Great Artesian Basin (GAB).

<div>This dataset comprises hydrochemistry results for groundwater, surface water, and rainwater samples collected as part of the Upper Darling Floodplain groundwater study. Associated methods, interpretation, and integration with other datasets are found in the Upper Darling Floodplain geological and hydrogeological assessment (Geoscience Australia Ecat ID:149689). This project is part of the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program, an eight-year, $225 million Australian Government funded geoscience data and precompetitive information acquisition program. The dataset contains 68 groundwater samples, 17 surface water samples, and four rainwater samples. Groundwater samples are from the Cenozoic formations within the alluvium of the Darling River, the Great Artesian Basin, and the Murray geological basin. Surface water samples are from the Darling River, and rainwater samples were taken within the study area. Subsets of the samples were analysed for major ions and trace metals, stable isotopes of water (δ2H and δ18O), radiocarbon (14C), stable carbon isotopes (δ13C), strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) isotopes, chlorine-36 (36Cl), noble gases, and Radon-222. The results were used to inform a range of hydrogeological questions including aquifer distribution and quality, inter-aquifer connectivity, and groundwater-surface water connectivity.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div>

This web service provides access to geological, hydrogeological and hydrochemical digital datasets that have been published by Geoscience Australia for the Great Artesian Basin (GAB).

Geoscience Australia and its predecessors have analysed hydrochemistry of water sampled from boreholes (both pore water and groundwater), surface features, and rainwater. Sampling was undertaken during drilling or monitoring projects, and this dataset represents a significant subset of stored analyses. Water chemistry including isotopic data is essential to better understand groundwater origins, ages and dynamics, processes such as recharge and inter-aquifer connectivity and for informing conceptual and numerical groundwater models. This GA dataset underpins a nationally consistent data delivery tool and web-based mapping to visualise, analyse and download groundwater chemistry and environmental isotope data. This dataset is a spatially-enabled groundwater hydrochemistry database based on hydrochemistry data from projects completed in Geoscience Australia. The database includes information on physical-chemical parameters (EC, pH, redox potential, dissolved oxygen), major and minor ions, trace elements, nutrients, pesticides, isotopes and organic chemicals. Basic calculations for piper plots colours are derived from Peeters, 2013 - A Background Color Scheme for Piper Plots to Spatially Visualize Hydrochemical Patterns - Groundwater, Volume 52(1) <https://doi.org/10.1111/gwat.12118>. Upon loading the data to the database, all hydrochemistry data are assessed for reliability using Quality Assurance/Quality Control procedures and all datasets were standardised. This data is made accessible with open geospatial consortium (OGC) web services and is discoverable via the Geoscience Australia Portal (<a href="https://portal.ga.gov.au/">https://portal.ga.gov.au/</a>). This dataset is published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia.