Completed 2021 Southern Stuart Corridor

The Southern Stuart Corridor project focused on 4 water management areas in the Northern Territory: Tennant Creek, Western Davenport, Ti Tree Basin and Alice Springs.

These areas in the southern half of the Northern Territory lie close to the Stuart Highway, and represent areas where the Northern Territory Government has identified a need for improved water resource management. Outside of these water management areas, the Southern Stuart Corridor project also investigated potential groundwater supplies for several remote communities.

Water allocation planning and agricultural expansion in the Southern Stuart Corridor is currently hampered by limited information about the character and extent of groundwater resources and groundwater systems more generally, including recharge rates, groundwater–surface water connectivity, and the dependency of vegetation communities on groundwater.

Benefits

The project provided baseline data to inform groundwater prospectivity analysis, support the development of holistic water and salinity management strategies and inform water allocations.

Achievements 

The main achievements of this project include:

  • an improved understanding of regional groundwater systems and processes, including the geology, basin architecture, surface water – groundwater interaction, inter-aquifer leakage, basin – paleovalley connectivity and potential groundwater dependence of vegetation
  • assessments of the location, quantity and quality of groundwater resources to underpin agricultural expansion and Alice Spring’s future water supply
  • identification of potential new groundwater resources to provide enhanced water security for remote communities
  • target identification of potential managed aquifer recharge areas, which could offset existing and potential future groundwater development.
Map of the Southern Stuart Corridor Project area showing the scope of work undertaken in the Southern Stuart Corridor projectmagnetic.

Southern Stuart Corridor project area

Collaboration

Project collaborators included:

  • The Northern Territory Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) (now Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security (DEPWS)
  • Northern Territory Power and Water Corporation
  • The Central Land Council (CLC)
  • Northern Territory Cattleman’s Association
  • Local Indigenous groups and landholders

Outputs 

New data acquisition

During the project, Geoscience Australia and partners:

  • acquired and processed 9,613 line kilometres of airborne electromagnetic data
  • drilled and completed 15 monitoring bores (about 2,400 metres of drilling)
  • collected and analysed 75 groundwater hydrochemistry samples
  • recorded and processed 118 surface magnetic resonance (SMR) soundings
  • recorded and processed NMR logs for 30 boreholes
  • recorded and processed induction and gamma geophysical logs for 50 boreholes.