Effects of Global Warming on Coastal Groundwater Resources: Simplified Approach for Global Scale Evaluations

This book shows a simplified approach to evaluate the integrated effects of global warming (climate change and sea level rise) and anthropogenic stress such as land use change on coastal groundwater resources, concerning the salinity intrusion in coastal aquifers. It helps to understand the behaviour of the coastal aquifer systems regionally as well as globally. As the proposed approach assists to overcome the problems due to lack of data and the available laborious and time consuming methodologies, it will be useful in areas where limited hydrological data is available. The introduced approach has been applied to evaluate the situation of global fresh coastal groundwater resources over the next century. Global scale evaluation shows that the future climate changes would reduce the fresh groundwater resources in most of the coastal regions in the world. Further, rapid growth of population and high demand for fresh groundwater will make the situation more complex. This book would assist the planners and decision makers to come up with control measures for ongoing coastal groundwater developments ensuring its long-term sustainability.