Characteristics of active seawater intrusion
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Date
2017-08
Authors
Badaruddin, Sugiarto
Werner, Adrian D
Morgan, Leanne K
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Rights
© 2017 Elsevier.
Rights Holder
Elsevier.
Abstract
The inland migration of seawater in coastal aquifers, known as seawater intrusion (SWI), can be categorised as passive or active, depending on whether the hydraulic gradient slopes downwards towards the sea or the land, respectively. Despite active SWI occurring in many locations, it has received considerably less attention than passive SWI. In this study, active SWI caused by an inland freshwater head decline (FHD) is characterised using numerical modelling of various idealised unconfined coastal aquifer settings. Relationships between key features of active SWI (e.g., interface characteristics and SWI response time-scales) and the parameters of the problem (e.g., inland FHD, freshwater-seawater density contrast, dispersivity, hydraulic conductivity, porosity and aquifer thickness) are explored for the first time. Sensitivity analyses show that the SWI response time-scales under active SWI situations are influenced by both the initial and final boundary head differences. The interface is found to be steeper under stronger advection (i.e., caused by the inland FHD), higher dispersivity and hydraulic conductivity, and lower aquifer thickness, seawater density and porosity. The interface movement is faster and the mixing zone is wider with larger hydraulic conductivity, seawater-freshwater density difference, and aquifer thickness, and with lower porosity. Dimensionless parameters (Peclet number and mixed convection ratio) from previous steady-state analyses offer only limited application to the controlling factors of passive SWI, and are not applicable to active SWI. The current study of active SWI highlights important functional relationships that improve the general understanding of SWI, which has otherwise been founded primarily on steady-state and passive SWI.
Description
© 2017 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 24 month embargo from date of publication (Aug 2017) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policy
Keywords
Seawater intrusion, Density-dependent flow, Solute transport, Coastal aquifer, Buoyancy
Citation
Badaruddin, S., Werner, A. D., & Morgan, L. K. (2017). Characteristics of active seawater intrusion. Journal of Hydrology, 551, 632–647. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.04.031