Summary of the Great Artesian Basin Research Priorities Workshop
27-28 April 2016, Canberra
Geoscience Australia
RECORD 2016/23
É.C.S. Lai1, B. Sundaram1, R. Evans2, T.R. Ransley1 and T.J. Evans1
- Geoscience Australia
- Salient Solutions Australia Pty Ltd
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia: Senator the Hon Matthew Canavan
Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science: The Hon Craig Laundy MP
Secretary: Ms Glenys Beauchamp PSM
Geoscience Australia
Chief Executive Officer: Dr Chris Pigram
This paper is published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia
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ISSN 2201-702X (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-925297-22-5 (PDF)
eCat 101440
Bibliographic reference: Lai, É. C. S., Sundaram, B., Evans, R., Ransley, T. R., and Evans, T.J. 2016. Summary of the Great Artesian Basin Research Priorities Workshop: 27-28 April 2016, Canberra. Record 2016/23. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2016.023
Executive Summary
The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is the largest groundwater basin in Australia, underlying parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory. The GAB contains a vast volume of underground water and it is a vital resource for pastoral, agricultural, and extractive industries as well as for town water supplies. Properly managing these groundwater resources, often with competing interests, requires sound understanding of the whole groundwater system.
The outcomes from past projects have identified numerous knowledge gaps, and have clearly shown that the GAB is a complex groundwater basin with a large component of vertical flow through geological structures and hydraulic connections in some areas to basins above, below and within the GAB. Understanding of the nature of groundwater occurrence and flow in the GAB is continually improving, and will need to continue to do so into the future. New information is required as new challenges arise; this knowledge evolution leads to a recognition that current key science issues exist that need to be explored. It is essential to share information about GAB water policy, management and research activities with relevant stakeholders and decision makers and work collaboratively to develop future science priorities.
The Great Artesian Basin Research Priorities Workshop, organised by Geoscience Australia (GA), was held in Canberra on 27 and 28 April 2016. Workshop attendees represented a spectrum of stakeholders including government, policy, management, scientific and technical representatives interested in GAB-related water management. This workshop was aimed at identifying and documenting key science issues and strategies to fill hydrogeological knowledge gaps that will assist federal and state/territory governments in addressing groundwater management issues within the GAB. The workshop was timely as the current GAB Strategic Management Plan (SMP) expired in 2015 and a new GAB SMP is being developed by the Australian and state/territory governments.
The workshop began with short presentations highlighting the current status of policy, management and science issues in the GAB, which provided initial ideas for the most pressing knowledge gaps in need of research. After the initial presentations, the groups of participants discussed and listed key knowledge gaps and management issues. When these ideas were collated, a number of concepts repeated across several discussion tables. This highlighted a number of key science issues for targeting future research.
Key science issues and recommendations for future research
Seven key science issues were identified from discussions in the workshop:
· Water Balance and Scale
· Recharge Estimation and Conceptualisation
· Connectivity Above, Below and Within the GAB
· Structural Geology, Tectonics and Sub-basins, and their Influences on the GAB
· Springs and Other Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems
· Hydrochemistry and Groundwater Flow
· Climate Change and Variability
The workshop sessions then focussed on listing objectives, deliverables, linkages to existing programmes, and formulating possible methods to address the key science issues.
The seven key science issues were dealt with separately, but are inter-linked. As such, no single issue should be researched in isolation. Furthermore, each of these seven science issues has multiple components. The development of strategies to address the key science issues should include components aimed at aligning with policy timeframes.
Future directions
This workshop report records stakeholders’ views on emerging groundwater management issues, key knowledge gaps and future research priorities for the GAB. It is anticipated that this report will inform the development of the next GAB SMP. The development of the GAB SMP is of high priority, at the Commonwealth level, as it will guide management directions and investment in the GAB for the next 15 years.
A pressing need for science, policy and management to collaborate and communicate effectively was acknowledged by all participants. Policy requires information over short timeframes (the next 5, 10 and 15 years), so prioritising issues accordingly is essential. Also, past efforts dealing with the GAB in its entirety have found many shortcomings – the concept of “hotspots” (or areas of high priority for focused investigation) was advocated for immediate future research. These hotspots are prioritised study areas within the GAB, enabling rigorous analysis around a chosen feature to address issues of community concern, rather than treating all regions with equal importance.
Consensus was that future work should be collaboratively undertaken. Overall, the workshop identified significant knowledge gaps in our current understanding of the hydrogeology of the GAB – impacting management of groundwater resources within the basin.
Contents
Executive Summary iii
1 Introduction and overview 1
2 Workshop discussions 3
2.1 Welcome and introduction 3
2.2 Group breakout and discussion session: identification of key knowledge gaps and management issues 5
2.3 Group breakout and discussion sessions: priorities for future research 7
2.3.1 Water Balance and Scale 7
2.3.2 Recharge Estimation and Conceptualisation 9
2.3.3 Connectivity Above, Below and Within the GAB 11
2.3.4 Structural Geology, Tectonics and Sub-basins, and their Influences on the GAB 12
2.3.5 Springs and Other Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems 14
2.3.6 Hydrochemistry and Groundwater Flow 16
2.3.7 Climate Change and Variability 17
2.3.8 Predictive Capability and Transience 18
3 Summary and Future Directions 20
3.1 Summary 20
3.2 Future Directions 20
4 Acknowledgements 23
4.1 Contributors to the Workshop 23
4.2 Other Acknowledgements 24
Appendices 25
Appendix A Workshop invitation and program 26
Appendix B GAB water management issues, knowledge gaps and priorities for future research preliminarily identified by workshop participants 30
B.1 Responses to Q1 (issues) 30
B.2 Responses to Q2 (gaps) 33
B.3 Responses to Q3 (priorities) 36
B.4 Responses to Q4 (atlas) 39
Summary of the Great Artesian Basin Research Priorities Workshop: 27-28 April 2016, Canberra. v
1 Introduction and overview
The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is the largest groundwater basin in Australia, underlying parts of Queensland (Qld), New South Wales (NSW), South Australia (SA) and the Northern Territory (NT). Groundwater resources in the GAB are used to support the pastoral, agricultural, and resource sectors as well as supplying water to inland communities – and demand for these resources is increasing. Effective and responsible management of these groundwater resources, often for competing interests, requires sound understanding of how the GAB groundwater systems operate. It is essential to communicate GAB water policy, management and research activities to relevant stakeholders and decision makers and use them to inform future research priorities.
Various government agencies and research organisations have been involved in studies to improve the understanding of GAB groundwater systems. Contemporary research demonstrates that the GAB is an extensive and complex groundwater basin, rather than the former concept of a simple, laterally-continuous aquifer system. The recent work undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA) in the Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment project and the former Carbon Capture and Storage Groundwater Project, as well as work by other agencies (such as the Allocating Water and Maintaining Springs in the Great Artesian Basin project and ongoing investigations associated with the Bioregional Assessments Programme), has led to revising some of the historical conceptual understandings and interpretations of the GAB structure. Some of these findings are described in GA’s 2015 publication, the “Hydrogeological Atlas of the Great Artesian Basin” (GAB Atlas).
Recent projects have highlighted areas of uncertainty and identified limitations in the existing knowledge of the GAB. Acknowledging these knowledge gaps encouraged GA to hold a workshop to identify research priorities and invite discussion from a variety of federal and state/territory perspectives. The Great Artesian Basin Research Priorities Workshop, organised by Geoscience Australia, was held in Canberra on the 27th and 28th of April 2016. Workshop attendees represented a wide spectrum of stakeholders with an interest in GAB-related water management, research and policy activities and included government, policy, management, scientific, and technical representatives. There were representatives from the Australian Government, and the governments of the four state/territory governments (“jurisdictions”) that include parts of the GAB (see list of attendees in Section 4.1).
The workshop began with a few short presentations highlighting the current status of policy, management and science issues in the GAB (Section 2.1). These provided initial ideas for the most pressing knowledge gaps in need of research. After the initial presentations, the groups of participants discussed and listed key knowledge gaps and management issues (Section 2.2). The ideas were collated, as a number of concepts repeated across several discussion tables. Seven prominent but interlinking key science issues were identified, and participants were divided amongst these based on their areas of expertise (Section 2.3). These groups first discussed listing objectives, deliverables and linkages to existing programmes relating to their key science issue; the final session focused on developing strategies to address the key science issues, primarily by formulating possible methods to progress the research. The workshop program is provided in Appendix A.
The workshop identified key hydrogeological knowledge gaps, as well as current and emerging groundwater management issues in the GAB. Some time was also spent formulating collaborative and deliverable projects that could fill the key knowledge gaps, and provide new scientific understandings to underpin the future management of the GAB.
The main purposes of the workshop were to:
· provide an opportunity to better understand the policy, management and science activities of the GAB, from both Commonwealth and jurisdictional perspectives
· provide a forum to discuss priorities for future work to address gaps and shortcomings in the current knowledge related to sustainable management of groundwater resources within the GAB
· explore opportunities for organisations to collaborate on future research
This report will form the basis of advice to the Australian Government on priorities for future GAB groundwater management and research.
2 Workshop discussions
2.1 Welcome and introduction
Dr Stuart Minchin, Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of GA delivered the welcome address and briefly outlined the purpose of the workshop. Ray Evans, facilitator of the workshop, followed on, discussing the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) workshop context and provided a brief overview of the workshop program.
After this introduction, the workshop began with some short presentations from key stakeholders from both State and Commonwealth agencies. These talks outlined the current status of policy, management and science issues in the GAB from an agency perspective. This was aimed at providing some initial ideas of the most pressing knowledge gaps that future research should focus on, for consideration during the workshop. The list of presenters was brief and therefore the views were not presented as being comprehensive.
The following provides the key summary of some of the major points these presentations:
· The Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) is in the process of developing new policy initiatives for the GAB. While the Commonwealth does not have an operational role in GAB management, it does have a coordination and funding role. The new policy initiatives are being developed within the context of lessons learnt from the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI) program, and the lead-up work for the development of the next GAB Strategic Management Plan.
· The GABSI program has been a very substantial investment in environmental outcomes when viewed against similar national programs. The questions being asked, as GABSI moves into any new phase, concentrate on what has been achieved thus far from the investment. This provides direction for any new GAB investment, in that a clear return on future investment will be required.
· The current GAB Strategic Management Plan (SMP) expired in 2015 and a new SMP is being developed. The workshop was considered to be timely assessment and review point for what new science could potentially provide input to the SMP. The new SMP is likely to focus on managing the resource, rather than funding programs. The Commonwealth is looking to bring GAB management in line with National Water Initiative principles. For instance, how far can management be moved to a Cap on Allocations across the Basin.
· In addition, DAWR intend to explore the possibility of merging the current ministerial advisory arrangements in place for the Lake Eyre Basin and the GAB (namely the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee and its subcommittees, as well as the Lake Eyre Basin Community Advisory Committee and the Lake Eyre Basin Scientific Advisory Panel). DAWR indicated a desire to consider managing the resources of the GAB integrated with the Lake Eyre Basin at the institutional level in some form. This merged management approach was raised in this presentation, but not discussed in further detail during the workshop.
· From a Commonwealth perspective, it is recognised that more research is required. However, any funding would be contingent on a sound scientific justification.
· The development of Coal Seam Gas within the Surat Basin (part of the GAB) has produced some challenges for water management. The Queensland Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) is currently developing a suite of products to inform the management of water take in the Surat. These works include a new geological model and the development of a revised groundwater numerical model. OGIA has also undertaken work on estimating Stock and Domestic bore use, spring typology and the nature of the contact between the Surat and Bowen Basins.