The Great Artesian Basin: Hydrogeological Data for Australia's Largest Groundwater System

The Great Artesian Basin covers 1.7 million square kilometers, or 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 activity and town water supplies. This dataset, sourced from the Australian Ocean Data Network, was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Model groundwater flow and recharge rates based on described hydraulic gradients and transmissivity values.
• Assess historical water level changes and resource depletion based on recorded potentiometric surface differences of up to 80 meters.
• Analyze aquifer properties and well performance based on data for approximately 4700 flowing artesian wells with depths up to 2000 meters.
• Study the geological structure and aquifer connectivity based on the described synclinal structure and confining units.

Strengths

• Covers a vast geographic area of 1.7 million square kilometers, representing a major continental groundwater system.
• Provides specific hydrogeological parameters, including hydraulic gradients (1:2000), transmissivity values (tens to hundreds m²/day), and storage coefficients (~10⁻⁵).
• Includes historical development context with quantified discharge rates, such as a maximum flow of about 2 million m³/day around 1918.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data.gov.au.

Collection Method

Likely compiled from geological surveys, well logs, and hydrogeological studies.

Time Range

Includes historical data from around 1880 to the early 1970s, with a last update in 2026.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 21:57:01.079708; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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