Mapping salinity and groundwater systems- a multi-disciplinary approach integrating geophysics and regolith geoscience

Abstract

In Australia, regolith (the soils, sediments, weathered bedrock and sediment, that lie between fresh air and fresh bedrock) is the major salt store in the landscape. Groundwaters move through these regolith materials, mobilising the salt which salinises our groundwaters, waterways and land. Yet today there is little more than surficial knowledge of regolith landscapes and materials, little appreciation of the distribution of salt or saline groundwaters buried in the landscape, and even less information on the dynamics of water-rock-salt interactions in these environments. This paucity of information restricts management options.