Abstract
Coastal areas of Bangladesh have been facing increasing salinity of surface water and groundwater. This study provides the approximate scope of the problem in a coastal area of southeastern Bangladesh by using less-accurate, but lower-cost salinity measuring devices that enable local people to assess the situation. Ten local women were employed to monitor 10 tube wells each on a weekly basis, from mid-February to mid-May, during the 2016 dry season. Geographical Information System and time series clustering were used to visualize the spatial distribution and seasonal change of the salinity levels. In addition, the tube well users were asked about the salt consumption in their daily diet. One-third of the monitored tube wells were found to contain more sodium than the tolerable level in terms of taste suggested by the World Health Organization. However, the mean salinity level across all monitored tube wells was much lower. The salinity level varied depending on the depth of the tube wells rather than their locations or altitudes, and those deeper than 200 m were likely to be salt free. The results of the diet survey showed that wealthier households tended to use more salt in their daily diets, but at the same time they tended to have deeper tube wells that are less likely to contain high levels of sodium.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013) reported in 2013 that the mean rate of global average sea level rise was 1.77 mm/year between 1901 and 2010, and 3.2 mm/year between 1993 and 2010
Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is a method that calculates an optimal match between two time series, which gives the shortest summed distance among all the pairs of the data points in each time series data
Since the names of their studied three unions were not reported and most of the monitored tube wells in this study were located in the coastal area and plains, the results cannot be directly compared but the analyses suggested that depths of tube wells could be a more deterministic factor that influences salinity level of drinking water
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013) reported in 2013 that the mean rate of global average sea level rise was 1.77 mm/year between 1901 and 2010, and 3.2 mm/year between 1993 and 2010. Glacier mass loss and ocean thermal expansion from warming are significant factors that could explain about 75% of the observed global mean sea level rise (IPCC 2013). Coastal zones are susceptible to the effects of sea level rise, such as loss and degradation of coastal land areas, higher tides during storm surges, and longer duration of inundation after floods. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, is highly vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise because it is a low-lying country located in the Ganges–Brahmaputra Delta. Increasing sea level rise will inevitably exacerbate the situation
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