Optimal Management of Drawdown and Saltwater Intrusion in Coastal Aquifers

Jibran Punthakey and Greg Hertzler

No 126122, 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Coastal aquifers are highly sensitive natural systems that require careful management and adequate planning in order to ensure that they are not over-exploited. The development of effective management strategies is particularly pertinent to coastal communities faced with increasing population pressures. This paper develops a multidisciplinary approach for the optimal extraction of water from a coastal aquifer. The objective is to maximise the net present value of the net economic benefits of pumping, subject to various hydrological constraints. A nonlinear demand function is used to quantify the benefits of water use, and analytical equations of groundwater flow and saltwater intrusion are used to integrate core principles of hydrology within the economic framework. For the optimisation of drawdown levels, a modified version of the Theis (1935) solution is used to calculate drawdown levels. For the prevention of saltwater intrusion, constraints are calculated using the single-potential sharp-interface solution developed by Strack (1976). The model is then applied to a hypothetical coastal community situated on the East coast of Australia. The results confirm the importance of accounting for spatial heterogeneity and temporal effects when modelling extraction from a complex natural system. In addition, a volumetric price of water is recommended as an efficient policy tool for the control and regulation of demand.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2010-10-14
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/126122/files/J ... AAE%20Submission.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:iaae12:126122

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.126122

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().