Data dictionary

Data systems 

This package gets data from a range of different websites:

Groundwater Data (on WaterConnect). This portal is maintained by the SA Government Department for Environment and Water (DEW) and is the main source of data for python-sa-gwdata. It presents a set of groundwater-focused exports/reports for effectively all drillholes in SA (not just water wells). There are some primary datasets which I call “bulk downloads”, and then a wide variety of endpoints on the internal APIs.
Water Data SA (an instance of Aquarius Web Portal) - this portal maintained by DEW presents continuous water monitoring data, both surface water and groundwater. The main aspect of data used from here is continuous data logger timeseries mainly of groundwater level in monitoring wells.
SARIG. This is a data portal maintained by the SA Government Department of Energy and Mining and is intended for use by the mining and petroleum industries. python-sa-gwdata accesses a small part of the website to show historical scanned files relating to drillholes.
Spatial Data on WaterConnect. This provides some large spatial layers with groundwater data.

A wide variety of information is stored and available as attributes for a well (so for example where you have a spreadsheet table and each well forms one row, then each of these fields would be a column with one value for one well).

Details of the fields available are in data fields: general well summary data.

Groundwater level 

Groundwater level observations made manually with a dipping tape are available. The frequency of observations varies from monthly to once every six months, with significant missing periods across different drillholes depending on the monitoring requirements.

#TODO: logger data via Aquarius to be made available in this package soon.

See groundwater level data fields for more details.

Salinity samples 

These are water samples collected from wells, usually by pumping deliberately for monitoring (or sampled from an irrigation pump), and the salinity estimated by measuring the electrical conductivity (EC)

See the water monitoring data tutorial for more details.

Wellhead elevation surveys 

Generally water monitoring wells are surveyed specifically for their elevation, and the data are kept here. The data are also arranged by time such that changes in the reference point for groundwater level measurements can be fully corrected to have a consistent and accurate measurement of groundwater level over the well’s life.

DEW also routinely upload elevations derived from digital elevation models (DEM) for wells which have not been surveyed. These elevations are included in this dataset, with the “survey method” field providing a way to discriminate the high-quality survey data from the much lower quality DEM data.

Water chemistry analyses 

General water chemistry measurements made on water samples obtained from drillholes. Most are major ions, but they do include other analytes for some drillholes. Any samples that were tested for salinity only are not likely to be in here - they will be in the salinity dataset described above.

Geological logs 

There are fundamentally two types of geological logs:

Driller’s / Lithology: descriptions of the lithology
Stratigraphic / Hydrostratigraphic: interpretations of the (hydro)stratigraphy

Note

For older wells, logs may be available in the scanned drillhole document images (e.g. typed or handwritten), but may not have yet been transcribed into the relevant part of the database, and therefore won’t show up in these tables.

Driller’s logs 

These are descriptions of the lithology intersected by a drillhole, as recorded by the licensed water well driller on their DWCR (drillers well completion report). The units and descriptions are often somewhat colloquial and informal but can be very useful bearing in mind that drillers generally have a lot of experience in a given area and can be very familiar with local variations in lithology and aquifer properties.

A driller’s log should be available for the majority of wells.

Lithological logs 

Descriptions of the lithology intersected by a drillhole, as recorded by a geologist or hydrogeologist. These are usually collected in addition to the drillers log, and are more detailed and formal in nature.

They are not available for most water wells.

Stratigraphic logs 

A stratigraphic log will provide an interpretation of the stratigraphy intersected by a drillhole. It is generally something done for historic wells, and mineral and petroleum wells, rather than water wells.

Hydrostratigraphic logs 

A hydrostratigraphic log provides an interpretation of the hydrostratigraphy (i.e. sequence of aquitards and aquifers) that a drillhole intersects. It’s similar to a stratigraphic log, but usually slightly more detailed and more relevant to groundwater work: for example, in a well on the Adelaide Plains, it would detail the depths of the T1 and T2 aquifers, whereas a stratigraphic log will only show the Port Willunga Formation.

These are not available for the majority of water wells, so you may have to search a little further afield for a nearby one.

Well construction 

There is a summary view of a well’s construction which is available as a table.

There are then also tables with details of the well’s construction:

Drilled intervals 

Detailed information about the drilled intervals that make up a drillhole: the depth interval, diameter, and drilling method used.

Casing intervals and cementing information 

Contains details of the casing installed in a well, such as the depths of installation and the material. It also contains limited information about the annular grout (e.g. a top and bottom depth, and the grout and water volumes).

Note that production zone data is not stored alongside casing data, and that some things which might be considered “casing” are actually stored in the production zone table below (e.g. sumps, screen blanks, and riser pipe).

Production zones 

Details of the production zone interval of a well e.g. screens, slotted sections, blank sections in screens, open hole intervals, and riser pipes. Some of these are intervals are what might more generally be known as “production” zones in the sense that they are likely to provide lateral access to groundwater in the formation. Others, however, do not (e.g. riser pipe), although they are stored in the same table.

The types of intervals that are recorded in this table are:

Type	Description	Provides access to groundwater at this depth?
OH	Open hole interval.	Yes
S / WS	Screen. Although ‘WS’ originally indicated wirewound screen, many/most of the entries with ‘S’ are indeed for wirewound screens.	Yes
SB	Blank section of pipe between screened intervals	No
SMP	Sump	No
SC	Slotted casing interval	Yes
PC	Perforated casing interval	Yes
UKN	Unknown interval	Maybe

Warning

Some depth entries in this table may not always be consistent with the drilled intervals table above.

Fields and field names are listed below for: the CSV file obtainable from Groundwater Data; the JSON returned by GetProductionZoneSummary; and the pandas DataFrame returned under the key "prod_zones" from sa_gwdata.construction_details().

Property	Description	CSV	DataFrame	JSON
Drillhole number	Alternative unique well ID	DHNO	dh_no	DRILLHOLE_NO
Unit number (hyphenated)	Alternative unique well ID	UnitNumber	unit_hyphen
Completion date	Date of the construction event	completion_date
Construction event type	Either “Construction”, which means the record indicates an event actually took place which changed the construction of the well; or “Survey”, which means it’s a description of the well’s construction at the time, not that the construction was changed on that date.	event_type
Interval depth from		DepthFrom_m	depth_from	PZONE_FR
Interval depth to		DepthTo_m	depth_to	PZONE_TO
Screen/hole diameter		Diameter_mm	pzone_diam	PZONE_DIAM
Production zone interval type	See descriptions above	Type	pzone_type	PZONE_TYPE_CODE
Interval material	Alternative unique well ID - not assigned for all wells	Material	pzone_material	PZONE_MTRL
Screen aperture		Aperture_mm	pzone_aperture	APERTURE
Comments	The actual measurement recorded in most cases	COMMENTS	comments

Water cuts 

Observations of groundwater level, salinity and yield made at the time of drilling. These observations are much more common for historical wells drilled by cable tool rigs, but they are still occasionally collected.