The NWI plan has acknowledged the importance of managing groundwater and surface water conjunctively as a whole water cycle, including a number of areas where development of knowledge, plans, and information systems is required. These areas include
- Increased knowledge of groundwater-surface water connectivity
- Return of over-allocated or overused systems to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction
- Better understanding of sustainable extraction rates and the relationships between groundwater resources and groundwater-dependent ecosystems
