Justin Costelloe: a champion of arid-zone water research

Excerpt

Justin Francis Costelloe (Fig. 1) was born in 1965. He grew up in the mining city of Bendigo (Victoria, Australia) before studying Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He went on to work as an exploration geologist in the mining industry in the dryland regions of Australia and Chile. He developed a love of Australia’s desert landscapes and returned to undertake Masters and PhD studies on arid zone hydrology at the University of Melbourne, before continuing as a research fellow and senior research fellow leading arid zone research projects. Justin was a leader in research aimed at understanding surface water and groundwater in Australia’s arid zone and also made important interdisciplinary contributions linking the hydrology and ecology of the arid zone, with a focus on Australia’s iconic Channel Country and the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). Drawing on his research and intimate field knowledge, he provided advice to government on management of the Lake Eyre Basin (LEB). Locations of the GAB and LEB, together with more detailed description of the GAB, are provided by Habermehl (2019, this issue). The LEB is the world’s largest internally draining river basin, covering 1.2 million km² or one-sixth of Australia, and occupies parts of the states of Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia as well as the Northern Territory. The main rivers rise in central Queensland and flow south-west to Lake Eyre, which is 16 m below sea level and located in South Australia. These rivers have intermittent to ephemeral flow regimes and the basin predominantly has semi-arid and arid climates and straddles the tropical and temperate zones (McMahon et al. 2008a, b).

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