The Great Artesian Basin covers 1.7 million square kilometers, about one-fifth of Australia, extending across parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. It consists of a multi-layered confined aquifer system with Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous sandstones, and its development since around 1880 supports pastoral industries and town water supplies. The dataset is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in June 2026.
Use Cases
- Model groundwater flow and recharge based on described aquifer thicknesses, transmissivity values, and hydraulic gradients.
- Assess historical water level changes and sustainability based on recorded potentiometric surface lowering and discharge data from the 1880s to 1970s.
- Map the spatial extent and structure of the aquifer system based on the described synclinal geometry and eastern marginal recharge zone.
- Analyze the impact of pastoral development on artesian well flows using data on the number of flowing wells and discharge volumes over time.
Strengths
- Covers a vast geographic area of 1.7 million square kilometers.
- Provides detailed physical parameters including aquifer thicknesses ranging from several meters to several hundred meters and transmissivity values of several tens to several hundreds m²/day.
- Includes historical development data, such as the count of approximately 4700 drilled wells and discharge records dating back to around 1880.
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
- Australian Ocean Data Network
- Time Range
- Historical data from around 1880 to the early 1970s, with metadata updated in 2026.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-04 08:46:22.756304; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- The Great Artesian Basin in Australia, covering parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.