Posted 1 July 2020
The management of withdrawals of ground water in the Central West remains an area of hotly-contested debate. Associate Professor of Hydrogeology Bryce Kelly has spent over a decade studying groundwater in the Central West, and has credited groundwater with “saving rural communities from collapse”, but its potential for future drought-proofing depends on how successfully it’s managed. He says current withdrawals “will only be sustainable if the Narromine region gets flooded frequently enough to balance the volume of groundwater extracted."
In a recent article produced by Central News: The UTS Journalism Lab, Associate Professor Kelly discusses recent water allocations in the Central West, and the reliance upon fossil water to ease some of the stresses associated with unrelenting draught. While these allocations have provided momentary relief to some growers, Dr Kelly raises concerns about the limited opportunities available for such deep and ancient acquifers to be replenished, particularly in the context of a changing climate.
Read the full article here.
Photo: credit to William Owens for the above image of solar-powered groundwater pumping in the region.
Professor Andy Baker features in American Water Resources Association ‘Water Resources Impact’, September 2020 edition.
The Connected Waters Initiative (CWI) is pleased to welcome Taylor Coyne to its network as a postgraduate researcher. If you’re engaged in research at a postgraduate level, and you’re interested in joining the CWI network, get in touch! The CWI network includes multidisciplinary researchers across the Schools of Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Languages and Law.
The Grand Challenge on Rapid Urbanisation will establish Think Deep Australia, led by Dr Marilu Melo Zurita, to explore how we can use our urban underground spaces for community benefit.
On the 21 August 2020, CWI researchers made a submission to the National Water Reform Inquiry, identifying priority areas and making a number of recommendations as to how to achieve a sustainable groundwater future for Australia.
Results published from a research project between the Land Development Department (LDD) Thailand and UNSW has demonstrated how 2-dimensional mapping can be used to understand soil salinity adjacent to a earthen canal in north east Thailand (Khongnawang et al. 2020).
