The Benefits of Spatially Targeted Water Level Management for Salinity Reduction in a Coastal Aquifer

I. Holman (), K. Rushton and T. Simpson

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2013, vol. 27, issue 1, 169-186

Abstract: This paper describes the results of a modelling investigation into reducing salinity impacts within a drained lowland coastal aquifer through management of drain water levels, and specifically assesses whether targeted water level management changes deliver similar levels of salinity benefit to subcatchment-scale changes. Water level increases across an entire pumped drainage system result in the largest simulated reductions in intrusion of saline groundwater, but they are also associated with greater adverse hydrological impacts. Similar reductions in saline inflows can be achieved by targeting the same increases in drain water levels to those areas in which an understanding of soils and drains indicates good drain-aquifer connectivity. Changing policy priorities will require land drainage operation and management to evolve. This study has shown that revised water level management regimes should not be based on optimisation against a single target, such as salinity reduction, but that acceptable solutions must be sought with local communities that balance the apportionment of costs and benefits at the appropriate scale, taking into account impacts outside of the immediately drained area. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Drain coefficient; Ditch drains; Norfolk Broads; UK; Numerical models; Saline intrusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-012-0175-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:27:y:2013:i:1:p:169-186

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-012-0175-1

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().