Water managers will be better able to predict groundwater levels with the release of new data from the Office of Water.
The ‘Losing Streams’ project improves the knowledge of the connectivity and inter-relationship of surface water and groundwater resources across a number of New South Wales catchments.
The three-year project involved the drilling of more than 70 investigation bores and the installation of 12 river gauging stations.
The report shows the Border-Rivers system is complex, with the aquifer recharge process differing across the catchment.
The Namoi River, near Narrabri, is connected to the groundwater supply, while in the Gwydir, the underlying aquifer is mostly recharged only during flood events.
Senior hydrogeologist Rob Brownbill says the data is particularly important in the wake of the recent drought.
“The research was done to give us a better understanding of the process of water leaking through riverbeds into groundwater systems, particularly in areas where the watertable is deep beneath the river,” he said.
“We used numerical models to predict what happens to the groundwater system and the river system under different use scenarios.”
Mr Brownbill says the new data will allow water managers across the region to make better decisions.
“When we make decisions about water sharing, we use the science we collect out in the field and feed it into groundwater models that tell us about what happens to the resource under different water sharing scenarios,” he said.
