Great Artesian Basin Groundwater Data Covering 1.7 Million Square Kilometers

1.7 million square kilometers of Australia's Great Artesian Basin, underlying arid regions across four states and territories. The dataset describes a multi-layered confined aquifer system up to 3000 meters thick, with hydraulic properties like transmissivity values ranging from tens to hundreds m²/day. Geoscience Australia provides data on over 4700 flowing artesian wells drilled to depths of up to 2000 meters, with historical discharge records dating from the late 19th century.

Use Cases

• Model groundwater flow and recharge patterns based on described hydraulic gradients and aquifer properties.
• Assess historical water level changes and resource sustainability based on recorded potentiometric surface lowering.
• Map the spatial extent and geological structure of aquifer systems based on the described synclinal basin geometry.
• Analyze the impact of pastoral development on groundwater discharge based on historical well flow data.

Strengths

• Covers a vast geographic area of 1.7 million square kilometers, approximately one-fifth of Australia.
• Includes detailed historical context with development timelines from 1880 and flow records from 1918 and the 1970s.
• Provides specific quantitative hydraulic parameters, such as transmissivity values of several tens to hundreds m²/day and hydraulic gradients around 1:2000.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is provided in PDF and HTML formats, which may require extraction for computational analysis.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Time Range

Historical data from circa 1880 to at least the early 1970s.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 03:52:54.382081; freshness should be verified.

Geography

The Great Artesian Basin, extending across parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, Australia.