Research has shown the outback Great Artesian Basin to be far more extensive than previously thought.

The Arid Lands Natural Resources Management Board has been mapping the area in preparation for a formal revision of a 30-year-old water allocation plan for the vast outback zone.

Regional manager for sustainable water use, David Leek, said there were records of about 800 springs in the area, but new research had found about 5,000.

Mr Leek said the new information challenged early thinking that water moved underground from the east.

"What we now understand is that the system is much more complex, there's a number of different layers and that those layers are intersected by faults and fractures in the Earth's surface, so there is actually more of a connection between the layers than we understood in the past," he said.

Mr Leek said at current extraction rates the volume of water in the Artesian Basin was not at risk.

"What we need to make sure that we do is we actually maintain the pressure in the system, because it's the pressure in the system that actually drives springs and actually drives the the water to the surface and sustains the springs," he said.

The basin is under a vast area of South Australia, parts of New South Wales and Queensland and the south-east corner of the Northern Territory.