Otway Basin Hydrogeology: Attributes for Groundwater Management

Approximately 150,000 square kilometres of the Otway Basin are covered by this hydrogeological inventory. It provides descriptive attribute information for areas bounded by spatial groundwater features, grouped into themes including location, geology, hydrogeology, groundwater management, and land use. The dataset focuses on the shallower onshore sedimentary units relevant for groundwater resources, detailing the basin's complex geological evolution from the Late Jurassic to the present.

Use Cases

• Assessing groundwater management and use based on administrative and hydrogeological attribute themes.
• Analyzing the relationship between land use, industry types, and groundwater features described in the dataset.
• Studying sedimentary basin evolution and aquifer formation based on described geological and stratigraphic cycles.
• Correlating surface water features with groundwater systems using the included physical geography and surface water themes.

Strengths

• Thematic organization covers 11 specific topics from demographics to scientific stimulus, suggesting detailed annotation.
• Spatial coverage is precisely defined, covering a 500 km long basin with an area of approximately 150,000 sq km.
• Cross-platform presence on data.gov.au indicates institutional curation and importance for national groundwater systems.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: row count, column names, file size, and specific license are not provided.
• The primary documented format is PDF, which may limit machine-readability and direct analysis of the underlying attribute data.
• Descriptions are repeated verbatim across platform entries, suggesting potential lack of granular, record-level documentation.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Likely compiled as part of the National Hydrogeological Inventory and Exploring for the Future programs.

Time Range

Geological time range from Late Jurassic to present (Neogene and Quaternary); specific data collection dates unknown.

Freshness

Last updated: 2026-04-30

Geography

Otway Basin, southeastern Australia, stretching ~500 km from Cape Jaffa, South Australia to Port Phillip Bay, Victoria and Tasmania's north-west.