Incorporating Groundwater Levels into Sea-Level Detection Models for Hawaiian Anchialine Pool Ecosystems

Abstract

ABSTRACT Marrack, L., 2015. Incorporating groundwater levels into sea-level detection models for Hawaiian anchialine pool ecosystems. As sea levels rise, the distribution and community structure of coastal ecosystems are expected to change. In many coastal aquifers, fresher groundwater floats on top of denser saltwater and will rise with sea level. Under these conditions, ecosystems dependent on groundwater may shift inland as a result of inundation, changes in salinity, or both. Groundwater-fed anchialine pool habitats existing in porous coastal substrates around the world have not been assessed for sea-level rise impacts. As a first step toward examining ecosystem response to rising water levels, geospatial models were developed to detect anchialine pools on the island of Hawai‘i at current water levels and models were validated with known pool locations. Specifically, the objectives were to determine whether accounting for groundwater levels in the model improved pool detection, to identify the model t...