Salinity status and TDS readings for groundwater management areas and selected bores in Western Australia.

This work was funded by the National Water Grid (DCCEEW). This data set contains spatial layers (shapefiles) of salinity status and TDS readings for Groundwater Management Areas (GMAs) and selected bores used to characterise brackish groundwater resources in Western Australia. Groundwater bore data were collated from state databases; WIR (DWER-145), Hydrological Bores (DPIRD-068) and selected WaterCorp monitoring bores along with CSIRO's geochemical groundwater database (CSH - Continental Scale Hydrogeochemical Data Collection). Groundwater management areas were used to assess the salinity status of aquifers and their allocations which are managed by DWER. Bores were grouped by GMAs and where possible attributed to aquifers within the GMA. Mean TDS values were standardised from various salinity measures recorded in the respective databases and thresholds used to categorise TDS readings for bores into the following classes:

"fresh to marginal" if the maximum TDS record for this bore was less than 1,000 mg/L

"partly brackish" if the median TDS record for this bore was less than 1,000 mg/L

"mainly brackish" if the median TDS record for this bore was greater than 1,000 mg/L

"brackish" if the minimum TDS record for this bore was greater than 1,000 mg/L and less than 15,000 mg/L

"saline" if the minimum TDS record for this bore was greater than 15,000 mg/L.

Resource salinity status is based on all bores within an individual aquifer or groundwater management subarea, resulting in the following categories:

"fresh to marginal" if all bores location within the identified resource were characterised as fresh to marginal

"mainly fresh to marginal" if groundwater was fresh to marginal in 80% or more of the bores

"mainly brackish" if more than 50% of the bores had brackish groundwater

"brackish" if all the groundwater in all bores was classified as brackish

"some brackish" for all other combinations of bore status within an aquifer or groundwater management subarea, excluding saline status

"mainly saline" if groundwater was saline in more than 50% of bores

"saline" if groundwater was saline in 50% of bores.