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Assessing groundwater storage change in the Great Artesian Basin using GRACE and groundwater budgets

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Large, confined aquifer systems play a vital role in sustaining human settlements and industries in many regions. Understanding the sustainability of these water resources requires the evaluation of groundwater storage change. Direct in-situ observation of groundwater storage is limited by the distribution and availability of groundwater level and aquifer storativity data. Here, we use and compare two auxiliary methods, applied at basin and sub-basin scales, to assess groundwater storage changes in the Great Artesian Basin (GAB), one of the World’s largest confined aquifer systems. The first, the groundwater budget, derives storage change as the residual of fluxes in and out of the GAB, assuming they are all accounted for and accurately estimated. The second uses time-variable gravity data from GRACE satellites to estimate temporal changes in groundwater mass, assuming that all other components of the terrestrial water mass change detected by GRACE are correctly subtracted. Despite the depletion observed during the 20th century, groundwater storage is mostly stable during 2002-2022. An increase in storage is detected in the Surat sub-basin; a major recharge area. This increase is attributed to an over-representation of large recharge events during the study period and/or storage recovery following rehabilitation of free-flowing bores. The GRACE approach might overestimate the increase in GAB storage by incorrectly attributing storage increase occurring in overlying aquifers to the GAB. In contrast, the recharge estimates used in the groundwater budgets do not account for flood recharge and might underestimate storage increase in the GAB.

Citation: Castellazzi, P., Ransley, T., McPherson, A., Slatter, E., Frost, A., Shokri, A., et al. (2024). Assessing groundwater storage change in the Great Artesian Basin using GRACE and groundwater budgets. Water Resources Research, 60, e2024WR037334. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037334

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Field Value
Title Assessing groundwater storage change in the Great Artesian Basin using GRACE and groundwater budgets
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/77797512-fe00-4372-91ac-cbd0b373c315
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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    ]
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  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Assessing groundwater storage change in the Great Artesian Basin using GRACE and groundwater budgets". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/assessing-groundwater-storage-change-in-the-great-artesian-basin-using-grace-and-groundwater-bu