Coastal regions and small ocean islands face significant risks from rising sea levels due to climate change, because waters can flood and inundate low-lying land surfaces.
“Climate change has become a more critical issue recently, especially for island countries and island provinces like the Bahamas. They are not only facing a water shortage problem because of the limitations of the islands, but also they are facing a coastal inundation problem due to sea level rise caused by climate change,” said Yipeng Zhang, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Zhang will present research on Wednesday at the Geological Society of America’s Connects 2021 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, that evaluates the impact on freshwater resources on small tropical islands due to sea level rise.
“What makes the news quite a bit, rightfully so, when we think about sea-level rise and islands is inundation and loss of land, especially for low-lying islands, but our focus is water resources,” said Alex Mayer, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso and principal investigator of this freshwater resource project. “In island aquifers, freshwater is usually found on a lens sitting on top of seawater, due to density differences. That [freshwater] lens can be a very precious and valuable resource especially because many of these islands don’t have access to sufficient surface water resources, so they’re maybe completely dependent on the groundwater.”
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