ESTIMATING SALTWATER INTRUSION USING SPATIAL DATASETS AND ANALYTICAL APPROACHES

Coastal regions are home to more than 40% of the world’s population and are critical zones of economic, residential, and recreational activity. Such activities are supported by freshwater resources at depth. However, under current scenarios of global sea-level rise (SLR) and climate change, coastal freshwater is under threat. Rising sea-levels “wedge” the saline seawater further into the coastal land, salinizing and contaminating fresh groundwater in a process called saltwater intrusion (SWI). Previous efforts have focused on localized SWI estimates using numerical models, but have neglected to incorporate regional differences in SLR and changes to recharge. In this work we provide, for the first time, a global assessment of SWI and SWI vulnerability, leveraging NASA datasets of recharge, seawater density, and SLR. By synthesizing various global datasets within an analytical framework, the work provides the first step towards evaluating the coastal impacts of saltwater intrusion in a changing climate.