Updating the atlas of groundwater dependent ecosystems in response to user demand

Abstract

In many parts of Australia, there is increasing pressure on water resources from various activities including agriculture, mining, urban and commercial developments. Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are vulnerable to altered groundwater regimes including flow, pressure, level and/or quality associated with such activities (Eamus et al. 2006). Understanding their locations and groundwater dependency is essential for the management of GDEs. The Atlas of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (the Atlas) is the national inventory of mapped GDEs in Australia. By making data easily available, the Atlas ensures GDEs can be considered in natural resource management, water planning processes and environmental impact assessments. The Atlas was first released on the Bureau website in September 2012. The original data in the Atlas was collected during 2009-10 at the national scale and there has been considerable progress in GDE mapping at the State and regional scale since this time. For example, the Queensland Government has created catchment-scale GDE maps for over half of their State. Due to an overwhelming request from users and stakeholders, the Bureau of Meteorology has worked with State and Territory water agencies to update the Atlas and maintain its currency. The Atlas has been updated with new regional-scale mapping for parts of New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. To update the Atlas, the Bureau collated State and regional GDE datasets from a number of agencies for each of the GDE layers: Aquatic, Terrestrial and Subterranean. Coverage was partial for most States, and datasets were created using a range of methods developed for different purposes which are no longer nationally consistent. To convey information about differences in data source, the attribution of GDEs was updated to clearly distinguish between pre-existing data from the national assessment and new datasets, whilst retaining key national scale information about the GDE potential (the confidence in the identification of an ecosystem as groundwater dependent). New attributes were added to the data model to capture information about the data source. Each dataset required a different approach for integration, and consultation with States and Territories helped in determining this process. The key steps for each State or Territory update were: 1. pre-processing of State and Territory datasets into new data model format 2. attribution of known and potential GDEs according to new rule system 3. mapping of data, which either involved replacing existing data or using precedence rules where overlap occurred 4. populating new data schema using State attributes 5. running Python script to populate national attributes. In this paper the Queensland Government’s GDE data is used as an example of how the Bureau integrated the new State GDE data into the Atlas to ensure that the best available GDE data can be accessed from a central location. Building on the success of the update, the Bureau has established a national GDE Reference Group to continue communication with data custodians, GDE experts and Atlas users. This group will facilitate ongoing access to updated GDE data in order to maintain the currency and relevance of this important product into the future.