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Sea Level Rise Threatens Small Island Developing Societies: Hydrogeology and Freshwater Sustainability

Abstract

Small Island Developing Societies (SIDS) are among the societies that are most vulnerable to climate change. Recent sea level rise has already caused SIDS inhabitants to abandon their communities. More than one meter of sea level rise by the year 2100 is likely to inundate coasts of many low-lying islands decreasing water resources through aquifer salinization. A lesser known impact of sea-level rise occurs where water tables become elevated above topographic lows, inundating island interiors to form lakes. Impacts of lake formation on water resource sustainability, however, remain unquantified. Here we use hydrologeological models, based on islands in the Bahamian archipelago, to demonstrate that evaporation of newly formed lakes can cause more than twice the loss of fresh groundwater resources relative to an equivalent amount of coastal inundation on islands with negative water budgets. This result implies that in dry climates, low-lying islands with inland depressions could face substantiallygreater threats to their water resources from sea-level rise than previously considered.

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Part of the 2016 Earth Planetary and Space Sciences Institute (EPSSI) Seminar Series

Annual seminar series on topics related to Earth Planetary and Space Sciences and course UN 4000 REMOTE SENSING.