Coastal Aquifer Management and Seawater Intrusion Optimization

Coastal aquifers, which lie at the interface between land and sea, are vital sources of freshwater for agriculture, industry and communities worldwide. Excessive groundwater abstraction can lower the water table and reduce the hydraulic barrier to seawater, inducing saltwater intrusion that degrades water quality and threatens long-term resource sustainability. Effective management therefore requires a balance between meeting water demand and preventing saline ingress. Over the past decade, advances in numerical modelling, decision-making methods and optimisation algorithms have enabled managers to simulate density-dependent flow processes, forecast intrusion under various pumping regimes and devise robust strategies to control saltwater advance. Approaches range from barrier well design and managed aquifer recharge to dynamic pumping schedules informed by uncertainty analysis. Integrating multi-objective optimisation, surrogate models and adaptive management frameworks has yielded practical solutions that account for climate variability, parameter uncertainty and socio-economic criteria. This research area addresses the global imperative to safeguard coastal groundwater in the face of population growth, climate change and competing water uses.

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Coastal Aquifer Management and Seawater Intrusion Optimization publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in coastal aquifer management and seawater intrusion optimization across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Coastal aquifer: A groundwater reservoir adjacent to the coast, influenced by both freshwater recharge and seawater intrusion.

Seawater intrusion: The landward movement of saline water into a freshwater aquifer due to natural or anthropogenic hydraulic gradients.

Optimisation under uncertainty: A decision-support approach that seeks management strategies robust to uncertainties in model parameters, observations and future conditions.

Surrogate model: A computationally efficient approximation of a complex numerical groundwater flow or transport model, used to accelerate optimisation and sensitivity analyses.

References

1. Management of Seawater Intrusion in Coastal Aquifers: A Review. Water (2019).
2. An ensemble-based approach for pumping optimization in an island aquifer considering parameter, observation and climate uncertainty. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2024).
3. Using TODIM decision method to control saltwater intrusion by numerical simulation approach (study area: Nowshahr-Nur aquifer). Applied Water Science (2023).
4. Investigating the Impact of Seawater Intrusion on the Operation Cost of Groundwater Supply in Island Aquifers. Water Resources Research (2023).
5. A Surrogate Modelling Approach Based on Nonlinear Dimension Reduction for Uncertainty Quantification in Groundwater Flow Models. Transport in Porous Media (2018).
6. Application of Monitoring Network Design and Feedback Information for Adaptive Management of Coastal Groundwater Resources. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2019).