Gulf water study
Department of Natural Resources, Environment, The Arts & Sport, 2009
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- Integrated Surface - Groundwater Model of the Roper River Catchment - Part A: Coupled Surface - Groundwater Model (PDF - 1.8 MB) | (Word - 3.3 MB)
- Integrated Surface - Groundwater Model of the Roper River Catchment - Part B: MIKE11 Surface Water Model (PDF - 3 MB) | (Word - 4.7 MB)
- Integrated Surface - Groundwater Model of the Roper River Catchment - Part C: FEFLOW Groundwater Model (PDF - 2.9 MB) | (Word - 3.5 MB)
- Dunmarra and Hodgson River Region (PDF - 3.3 MB)| (Word - 3.4 MB)
- Limmen Bight and McArthur Rivers Region (PDF - 10.5 MB) | (Word - 9 MB)
- Robinson and Calvert Rivers Region (PDF - 9.7 MB) | (Word - 7 MB)
- Roper River Region (PDF - 5 MB) | (Word - 2.2 MB)
Executive summary
The Gulf Water Study is a three year project funded jointly by the Australian Government's Water Smart Australia Program and the Northern Territory Government. The Water Smart Australia Program aims to accelerate the development and uptake of smart technologies and practices in water use across Australia.
Water reform through the Australian Government National Water Commission's National Water Initiative (NWI) has established that environmental water provisions should be made prior to allocating to other consumptive uses. This has proven difficult in Southern Australia with its history of urban and rural developments. There is an opportunity here in the tropical north to do it smart. We can obtain the knowledge on environmental water provisions before allocation.
A key outcome of the Gulf Water Study is the development of an integrated surface - groundwater model of the Roper River. The integrated model of the Roper River will provide water allocation planners with quantitative information on the water resources and an indication of possible impacts on groundwater dependent ecosystems due to development. This information will help in long term decision making and identify the areas where further study is required. The model also provides quantitative information, through the ability to undertake scenario modelling, that will ensure that the current and planned regional water uses remain within sustainable limits.
The identification of sources of dry season water in the catchment will enable property planning and development opportunities by station managers.
A groundwater model encompassing the two major aquifer systems providing baseflow to the Roper River and its' tributaries has been developed. However, the current version of the module used to couple the surface water and groundwater models (IFMMIKE11) does not appear to support the separate meshes used to model the two aquifer systems in a single model. It is anticipated that this limitation will be rectified in future iterations of the model development. As there is little development in the Dook Creek Formation at the present time and in the foreseeable future, the need for a fully distributed groundwater model is not a priority and the historic dry season groundwater flows are adequately simulated using the MIKE11 groundwater module.
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