Three-dimensional visualisation of the Great Artesian Basin

Brief description

This three-dimensional visualisation product is intended to accompany the reports from the Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment, specifically "The three-dimensional visualisation of the Great Artesian Basin" report (Nelson et al., 2012). The report describes products, outputs and outcomes of the three-dimensional (3D) visualisation component of the Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment (the Assessment). This report specifically encompasses the following topics associated with the 3D visualisation component:

- The requirements and potential benefits
- The effective datasets
- Methodology used in content creation
- The output datasets
- Discussions regarding outcomes, limitations and future directions

The Assessment is designed to assist water managers in the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) to meet National Water Initiative commitments.

The key datasets of the 3D visualisation component include contact surfaces between major aquifers and aquitards with coverage of significant portions of the GAB, well lithostratigraphic and wire-line data and hydrogeochemistry produced by State and National Agencies. These datasets are manipulated within GOCAD® to develop the 3D visualisation component and communication products for use by end users to assist visualisation and conceptualisation of the GAB. While many options have been investigated for distribution of these 3D products, 2D screen captures and content delivery via the Geoscience Australia (GA) World Wind 3D data viewer will be the most efficient and effective products.

This 3D visualisation should be viewed in reference to the "Lexicon of the lithostratigraphic and hydrogeological units of the Great Artesian Basin and its Cenozoic cover" report (Radke et al., 2012) also created as part of the Assessment.

LINEAGE (continued from Lineage field)

REFERENCES
1. Welsh, W.D. 2000. GABFLOW: A steady state groundwater flow model of the Great Artesian Basin, Bureau Rural Sciences. Canberra.
2. Nelson GJ, Carey H, Radke BM and Ransley TR (2012) The three-dimensional visualisation of the Great Artesian Basin. A report to the Australian Government from the CSIRO Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment. CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, Australia.
3. Radke BM, Kellett JR, Ransley TR and Bell JG (2012) Lexicon of the lithostratigraphic and hydrogeological units of the Great Artesian Basin and its Cenozoic cover. A technical report to the Australian Government from the CSIRO Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment. CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, Australia.
4. Ransley TR and Smerdon BD (eds) (2012) Hydrostratigraphy, hydrogeology and system conceptualisation of the Great Artesian Basin. A technical report to the Australian Government from the CSIRO Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment. CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, Australia.
5. Senior and associates (1997). Geoscience Australia internal data set and contour interpretations by Senior B. Canberra, Groundwater Group, Environmental Geoscience Division, Geoscience Australia.
6. Van der Wielen S, Kirkby A, Britt A, Nicoll M and Skirrow R (in prep.) An integrated, multiuse 3D map for the greater Eromanga Basin, Australia. Geoscience Australia record 2011/XX, Canberra.

METHOD

The data are visualised in the Geoscience Australia (GA) 3D Data Viewer, a virtual globe application developed at GA using the NASA World Wind Java SDK. A public version of the Viewer is available on the GA website
at http://www.ga.gov.au/apps/world-wind, and the source code for the tool is available open-source at
http://github.com/ga-m3dv/ga-worldwind-suite.

Lineage

Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned

Statement: SOURCE DATA:

**HYDROSTRATIGRAPHY
Formation bases [available from http://www.ga.gov.au using catalogue numbers listed below ]
01 3-second Digital Elevation Model surface [catalogue #75990]
02 Base of Cenozoic surface [catalogue #75991]
03 Base of Mackunda Formation and equivalents surface [catalogue #76021]
04 Base of Rolling Downs Group surface [catalogue #76022]
05 Base of Hooray Sandstone and equivalents surface [catalogue #76023]
06 Base of Injune Creek Group surface [catalogue #76024]
07 Base of Hutton Sandstone surface [catalogue #76025]
05-07 Base of Algebuckina Sandstone surface [catalogue #76952]
08A Base of Evergreen and Marburg formations [catalogue #76026]
08B Base of Poolowanna Formation [catalogue #76953]
09 Base of Precipice Sandstone and equivalents surface [catalogue #76027]
10 Base of Jurassic-Cretaceous surface [catalogue #76028]

Other Formation Bases
1. Beautified surfaces (with minimised crossovers) for formation bases 02 to 10

Constraints
1. Well constraints for formation bases 02 to 10. These are positions in 3D space where the surface is known to intersect. See Nelson et al (2012) for more information.

**GROUNDWATER
1. Water table elevation of the Great Artesian Basin [available from http://www.ga.gov.au , catalogue #75830]
2. Modelled potentiometric surface of the Cadna-owie - Hooray aquifer (Welsh, 2000)

**BOUNDARIES
1. Revised Great Artesian Basin Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary [available from http://www.ga.gov.au , catalogue # 75904]
2. GABWRA reporting region boundaries for the Carpentaria, Central Eromanga, Surat and Western Eromanga basins (Ransley TR & Smerdon BD (eds), 2012)

**GEOLOGY
1. Geoscience Australia - Fault surfaces over 40km
Senior and associates (1997).

2. Known structural faults in the Eromanga Basin
Vertical fault traces from Van der Wielen et. al. (2011/in press)



**GEOSCIENCE AUSTRALIA DATA SETS
Additional objects that are optional packages to the Assessment 3D visualisation are sourced from the GA Common Earth Model datasets which include:
- 1:1,000,000 scale surface geology maps of Australia
- Radiometric map of Australia, 2nd Edition, 2010
- Gravity anomaly map of the Australian Region, 3rd Edition, 2008
- Magnetic anomaly map of Australia, 5th Edition, 2009
- Australia's Dynamic Land Cover Map, 1st Edition, 2010

*** References and method listed in Abstract due to space constraints in Lineage field ***