Ideas and perspectives: Land–ocean connectivity through groundwater

Abstract

For millennia, humans have gravitated towards coastlines for their resource potential and as geopolitical centres for global trade. A basic requirement ensuring water security for coastal communities relies on a delicate balance between the supply and demand of potable water. The interaction between freshwater and saltwater in coastal settings is, therefore, complicated by both natural and human-driven environmental changes at the land–sea interface. In particular, ongoing sea-level rise, warming and deoxygenation might exacerbate such perturbations. In this context, an improved understanding of the nature and variability of groundwater fluxes across the land–sea continuum is timely yet remains out of reach. The flow of terrestrial groundwater across the coastal transition zone and the extent of freshened groundwater below the present-day seafloor are receiving increased attention in marine and coastal sciences because they likely represent a significant yet highly uncertain component of (bio)geochemical budgets and because of the emerging interest in the potential use of offshore freshened groundwater as a resource. At the same time, “reverse” groundwater flux from offshore to onshore is of prevalent socio-economic interest, as terrestrial groundwater resources are continuously pressured by over-pumping and seawater intrusion in many coastal regions worldwide. An accurate assessment of the land–ocean connectivity through groundwater and its potential responses to future anthropogenic activities and climate change will require a multidisciplinary approach combining the expertise of geophysicists, hydrogeologists, (bio)geochemists and modellers. Such joint activities will lay the scientific basis for better understanding the role of groundwater in societally relevant issues such as climate change, pollution and the environmental status of the coastal oceans within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Here, we present our perspectives on future research directions to better understand land–ocean connectivity through groundwater, including the spatial distributions of the essential hydrogeological parameters, highlighting technical and scientific developments and briefly discussing the societal relevance of that connectivity in rapidly changing coastal oceans.