The Australian Government’s bioregional assessments programs provide transparent scientific information to better understand the potential impacts of unconventional gas and coal mining developments on water and the environment.
Each program has developed an ‘explorer’. The explorers are interactive webtools which give anyone the ability to explore and focus on the matters that have been assessed which are of most interest to them. Both explorers are designed to be used with reference to the detailed scientific documentation that has been prepared for each assessment, this way users are able to view the information in the correct context.
Geological and Bioregional Assessment Program: GBA Explorer
The Geological and Bioregional Assessment Program assesses the potential impacts of shale, tight and deep coal unconventional gas resource developments across three priority basins: the Cooper Basin; the Isa Superbasin; and the Beetaloo Sub-basin. The GBA Explorer is the single location where the program’s complete array of information, data, methods and assessments are described.
The Geological and Bioregional Assessment Program assessed the potential water-related and environmental risks of these unconventional gas resource developments using ‘causal networks’. Simply a causal network shows the complex and connected nature of the environment and regulations in the region being assessed. The causal network provides a systematic approach to assessing direct and indirect pathways from gas development activities to environmental values. It can be consistently applied across large areas and diverse environments. Causal networks also allow the evaluation of likelihood, consequence and the effectiveness of mitigation or management measures on environment and water-related matters. The GBA Explorer gives each user a personalised experience analysing the program’s results by navigating through the causal network and providing control to focus on the things that are of particular interest to that user.
Bioregional Assessment Program: BA Explorer
The Bioregional Assessment Program was completed in 2018 and looked at the impacts of coal seam gas and large coal mining developments on water resources and water-dependent assets over six bioregions. The Bioregional Assessment (BA) Explorer is a mapping tool that displays results of the bioregional assessment for the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine, Gloucester , Hunter, Galilee and Namoi subregions.
More information on using the BA Explorer can be found here.