Assessing Groundwater Storage Change in the Great Artesian Basin Using GRACE and Groundwater Budgets

Abstract

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 approach consisting in disaggregating GRACE data assumes that water storage changes in confined aquifers is dominated by changes in the GAB, and as such, it may overestimate the increase in the GAB by incorrectly attributing the 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.