Publication Name: AEGC 2021
Authors: Neil Symington, Anandaroop Ray, Chris Harris-Pascal, Kok Piang Tan, Richard Taylor, Yusen Ley-Cooper, Ross C Brodie
Date Published: September 2021
Number of Pages: 4
Abstract:
Groundwater is a critical resource for supporting human consumption, stock water, agricultural use, and mineral or energy extraction as well as the environment. However, the quality of groundwater varies enormously from potable to hyper-saline, particularly in the Australian context. To evaluate the suitability of a groundwater resource, the spatial distribution of salinity within an aquifer is typically estimated by measuring the electrical conductivity (EC) of groundwater sampled from boreholes. However, drilling is a logistically and economically challenging task, and hydrogeologists are usually left with a sparse set of measurements from which to infer groundwater salinity over large spatial extents.