Hydrogeological Solutions to Safeguard Freshwater Availability in Coastal Zones
Date: April 12, 2022
ABSTRACT
There is no shortage of groundwater problems in coastal areas. In many places around the world over-abstraction has led to seawater intrusion and available fresh groundwater reserves are threatened by pollution. To make matters worse, climate change, sea level rise and increased water demand are likely to aggravate the current problems. Yet our ability to provide hydrogeological solutions is also increasing. Technologies like brackish groundwater desalination and managed aquifer recharge are being deployed more and more to safeguard the availability of freshwater. This seminar provides an overview of the state of coastal aquifers and the measures that can be implemented to solve water management issues in coastal zones.
SPEAKERS
Vincent Post, International researcher in hydrogeology and founder of the Edinsi Groundwater, the Netherlands; Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Dr. Vincent Post worked as an assistant professor at VU University Amsterdam, and subsequently at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. From 2016 to 2021 he worked as a research associate at the Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Germany. In July 2021 he founded Edinsi Groundwater, a company that aims to provide hydrogeological knowledge to support the sustainable management of groundwater. His main areas of expertise include coastal groundwater systems and the development and application of reactive transport models. He is a main volunteer in promoting coastal hydrogeology, which has evolved significantly over the past decades. He is one of the lead developers of the PHT3D code, a three-dimensional reactive transport simulator with capabilities for variable-density and unsaturated flow. Vincent has conducted hydrogeological investigations in the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Australia, Namibia, Vietnam and the Pacific region. He was an Editor of the Hydrogeology Journal and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Hydrology. He has published extensively on coastal groundwater flow and chemical processes. He co-authored the professional textbook Coastal Hydrogeology (with Jimmy Jiao) that was published in 2019 as well as Analytical Groundwater Modeling: Theory and Applications using Python (with Mark Bakker) that is due to appear in 2022.
Fairouz Slama, Associate Professor, The National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT), Tunisia.
Dr. Fairouz Slama is an Associate Professor at The National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) where she teaches modelling of transport in porous media, environmental impact assessment and urban hydraulics. Her research focuses on numerical modelling of water flow and solute transport in porous media, soil and groundwater monitoring and remediation, and hydrogeophysics. She worked as a research engineer at the National Researches Institute of Rural Engineering, Water and Forests, where she conducted experimental and numerical studies about irrigation and drainage systems. She also contributed to the study of salinization processes occurring in coastal aquifers due to seawater intrusion and solute recycling. She is currently the secretary of the IAH Tunisian chapter.
Link to recording (Password to open the recording: xMG8fFF@)
