National Groundwater Recharge Observing System (NGROS)

Welcome to the National Groundwater Recharge Observing System (NGROS). The NGROS system places sensors in tunnels, mines and other subsurface spaces to measure groundwater recharge over time, space and utilise locally available rainfall data to calculate “event-based” recharge following rainfall. Groundwater makes up around 17% of accessible water in Australia and accounts for more than 30% of total water consumption. The use of groundwater increased drastically over the course of the Millennium drought, accounting for as much as 70% of irrigation water across the Murray Darling Basin.

Quantifying the amount groundwater recharge is important to enable the sustainable management of this water resource that supports agriculture, mining and extraction of minerals.

For more information about the project, our initial sites, and preliminary data, our pre-print “An underground drip water monitoring network to characterize rainfall recharge of groundwater at different geologies, environments, and climates across Australia” is available to download at EGUsphere. The data generated by the project team and its collaborators from NSW, VIC, QLD, SA and TAS is available here as a TSDB (Time Series Data Base). Data is uploaded manually as new data becomes available and data is accessible to users at this webpage using the Australian Access Federation (AAF) login.

We would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council for their support to the project.

For any queries, please contact: