The Future Farming Systems Research (FFSR) bore database

The FFSR bore database stems from the salinity investigations conducted by the former Victorian Soil Convervation Authority (SCA) in the late 1970s.  Groundwater observation bores and piezometers were installed by the SCA to monitor the groundwater levels and investigate the salinity threat to agricultural land.  With the release of the first Victorian Salinity Strategy in 1988, monitoring watertable levels became widespread and the number of watertable monitoring bores rapidly increased. The salinity monitoring database emerged in 1994 when the former Centre for Land Protection Research (CLPR) assembled the data, which has since evolved as the FFSR bore database.

The quality of the data in the FFSR database varies as many bores were constructed by regional DEPI offices and bore construction records and bore logs were not recorded.  Waterlevel monitoring has been sporadic and has ceased in many locations.  Some salinity bores are still monitored by the FFSR group within DEPI, Federation University Australia (Corangamite region only) and community monitors (LandCare groups).

Data access and currency

Update: Hosting by the Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI) has now ceased and VVG is in the process of gaining access to the data to be able to present it again. Below entails the interoperable process that was previously used. This was an excellent proof of concept activity. 

The FFSR bore data displayed on the VVG portal was delivered using interoperable technologies for the interchange of groundwater data (GroundwaterML). VeRSI was hosting services on behalf of DEPI to provide this data in the most interoperable way possible. There were several Web Feature Services that were being accessed via the VeRSI installation.

  1. Bore locations which provided the point data for the map were being accessed on-the-fly from a basic (but fast) WFS simple feature service.
  2. When the user clicked through to view full bore information, the VVG portal accesses, translated and presented data to the user from several complex feature services:
    1. WaterWell service (GroundwaterML) - bore bore details and monitoring
    2. MappedInterval service (GeoSciML) - for lithology and stratigraphy

Please Note: VeRSI services were based on an extract of the former DPI FFSR (now DEPI) database from 2011.