Présentations Colloques

In Australia groundwater is major source of water for many urban and rural communities, as well as industry and agriculture. In some places it is the only water available. Groundwater also sustains many rivers and wetlands during dry periods. Nationally consistent groundwater information is needed to underpin national decisions. However, it has been difficult to depict a seamless national picture of groundwater resources and frame groundwater issues at a national scale. This is due to the distributed nature of groundwater management across the various levels of government as well as private agencies. **In recent years the Bureau of Meteorology has been tasked with collating, standardising and analysing water (including groundwater) data from across Australia. The Bureau has adopted a collaborative approach and worked closely with State and Territory governments and other agencies to develop a consistent representation of groundwater accessible and downloadable to all. When groundwater data is submitted to the Bureau by water agencies, it is standardised for terminology and format, and then ingested in the National Groundwater Information System (NGIS) resulting in a standardised groundwater data for more than 800,000 bores. Time series of groundwater level, salinity and entitlements are ingested into a SQL database and a bore-by-bore analysis of groundwater level and salinity is also undertaken.**This data is available to be visualised and downloaded through the Groundwater Information Suite. The suite comprises four products- a) the Insight, a mobile-friendly map portal designed for non-experts+ b) the Explorer, a sophisticated mapping portal+ c) the NGIS database of spatial information for GIS experts+ and d) the Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems Atlas, a national inventory of groundwater dependent ecosystems. For the first time, decision-makers in industry, government and the community have easy access to comprehensive, nationally consistent information on groundwater across Australia.**