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Using regional airborne electromagnetic conductivity data to characterise surface water groundwater interaction in the Cooper Creek floodplain in arid central eastern Australia

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data has been acquired at 20km line spacing across much of the Australian continent and conductivity models generated by inverting these data are freely available. Despite the wide line spacing these data are suitable for imaging the near surface and better understanding groundwater systems. Twenty-kilometre spaced AEM data acquired over the Cooper Creek floodplain using a fixed-wing towed system were inverted using deterministic and probabilistic methods. The Cooper Creek is an anabranching ephemeral river system in arid eastern central Australia. We integrated conductivity data with a range of surface and subsurface data to characterise the hydrogeology of the region and infer groundwater salinity from the shallow alluvial aquifer across a more than 14,000 km2 Cooper Creek floodplain. The conductivity data also revealed several examples of focused recharge through a river channel forming a freshwater lens within the more regional shallow saline groundwater system.   This work demonstrates that regional AEM conductivity data can be a valuable tool for understanding groundwater processes at various scales with implications for how to responsibly manage water resources. This work is especially important in the Australian context where high quality borehole data is typically sparse, but high-quality geophysical and satellite data are often accessible.

This presentation was given to the 8th International Airborne Electromagnetics Workshop (AEM2023) (https://www.aseg.org.au/news/aem-2023)

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Field Value
Title Using regional airborne electromagnetic conductivity data to characterise surface water groundwater interaction in the Cooper Creek floodplain in arid central eastern Australia
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/5f3784a6-20ba-4ddf-974b-4cae357f6ef7
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 23/10/2023
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Using regional airborne electromagnetic conductivity data to characterise surface water groundwater interaction in the Cooper Creek floodplain in arid central eastern Australia". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/using-regional-airborne-electromagnetic-conductivity-data-to-characterise-surface-water-groundw