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Abstract
Coastal freshwater resources are commonly under high risk of being contaminated from seawater. The main processes that affect seawater intrusion are groundwater overexploitation, land use change, and climate change effects. In this context coastal lagoons represent the more sensitive environments prone to seawater intrusion. Numerical modelling is a useful tool to understand and predict seawater intrusion. In this study, a three-dimensional SEAWAT model is employed to simulate the seawater intrusion to coastal aquifers of Variconi Oasis (Italy). The present simulation was divided into a calibration and a validation model, then the model was used to predict the salinization trend up to 2050. Results show the role of the sea in salinizing the beach front, while the retrodunal environment is characterized by transitional environments. Future seawater intrusion scenarios considering only climate data showed no significative differences in respect to the actual situation. The same happens considering also a low sea level rise prediction. On the contrary, the worst scenario (high sea level rise prediction), depicts a quite different situation, with a saline intrusion in the Variconi oasis that will severely affect the fragile transitional ecosystem. This modelling framework can be used to quantify the effects of climate changes in similar coastal environments.
Highlights
Seawater intrusion (SWI) is a worldwide problem, especially in coastal aquifers where fresh groundwater resources are significantly threatened by saline water [1]
Precipitations will decrease in the summer-autumn period, where combined with the high temperatures will create a little more pronounced dry period extending to September
The value of calibrated recharge rate is 662 mm/year considerably lower than the mean precipitation rate; this is probably due to evapotranspiration processes occurring in the thin unsaturated zone, here not modelled
Summary
Seawater intrusion (SWI) is a worldwide problem, especially in coastal aquifers where fresh groundwater resources are significantly threatened by saline water [1]. This problem become more serious due to the combined effect of climate change, sea-level rise, land use changes, population growth and groundwater over-pumping through years [2]. SWI occurs in coastal freshwater aquifers when different densities of freshwater and saltwater allow saltwater to intrude into freshwater aquifers that are in hydraulic continuity with seawater. SWI is a physically density-dependent problem [3,4] where two different equations need to be coupled: (i) groundwater flow equation and (ii) solute (salt) transport equation. Pholkern et al [11] used SEAWAT to assess the impact of climate change on salinity distribution for both the deep and shallow groundwater systems in Huai Luang
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