Hundreds of volunteers recruited to unravel groundwater mystery in northern Australia

The study hopes to use a small army of citizen scientists to collect, analyse and record samples of water taken from bores from across the Territory, the Pilbara, and the Kimberley.

It comes as a surprise to many people to learn how heavily the north relies on the water beneath their feet.

After all, this is where the Australian continent protrudes into the tropics and wet season rains can be measured in metres.

But there's actually very little surface water there.

Australia's greatest explorer John McDouall Stuart discovered this to his peril when he slogged it out to finally make the south-north crossing of the continent in 1862.

Most Territorians - including their stock, their crops - owe their continued survival to groundwater.

Groundwater accounts for 90 per cent of all of the NT's "consumptive water supplies".

The fragility of these supplies has come to public attention in recent years with the expansion of cotton growing on the Top End's vast cattle stations.

While the cotton industry insists most crops are grown on the wet season rains alone, there are environmental fears about any move to irrigate crops using bore supplies.

Not a lot is known about these groundwater systems, but a new Charles Darwin University study aims to employ citizen science to better understand what is hiding underfoot.

CDU freshwater ecologist and research leader Professor Jenny Davis said the aim was to recruit several hundred volunteers collecting water from more than 500 groundwater bores.

The citizen scientists will input data collected straight into an app designed and built specifically for the project.

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"We will be providing easy-to-use and simple field kits, so citizen scientists can collect samples for testing," Professor Davis said.

"We will be testing things such as salinity levels, isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen in the water to determine its age, and even test for microplastics.

Scientists using fishing rods plumbed the depths of 26 groundwater bores and two springs in August and October 2019 as part of a monitoring program during the exploratory phase of Beetaloo drilling.

The Beetaloo, 500km south-east of Darwin, is thought to hold vast reservoirs of natural gas locked in shale rocks deep underground.

Researchers from the CSIRO and Darwin's Charles Darwin University found a tiny blind shrimp was also living down there in the darkness, measuring up to 20mm.

There were whole families of tiny aquatic animals known as stygofauna, mostly between 0.3 and 10 millimetres in length.

Some are new to science.

It wasn't just the little animal they worry about if fracking of wells was allowed to happen here, but the belief it could prove the aquifers in this remote beef grazing country are connected.

There are fears the fracking process used to extract the gas could pollute the vital groundwater.

Prof. Davis said groundwater is vital for communities, farmers, and industry across the Northern Territory.

"The community's concern about water overuse and pollution is rising," she said.

"The remoteness and vastness of the tropical and arid regions of northern Australia mean that community engagement is the only way that information can be collected effectively across such a large spatial scale."

Professor Davis and the team of researchers, including CDU freshwater ecologist Dr Erica Garcia and CDU hydrologist Dr Dylan Irvine will first be conducting a pilot project and developing the app before rolling it out across Northern Territory and northern Western Australia.

The project is a collaboration with an app and website developer, Inspired NT and the Northern WA and Northern Territory Innovation Hub.

The project has received $450,000 over three years from The Ian Potter Foundation for the study.