Image of the week - Grids help map salt in coastal aquifer

The Korba aquifer in Tunisia is being studied using the grid-enabled CODESA-3D tool, a hydrological application deployed on the EUMEDGRID e-infrastructure. Image courtesy of EUMEDGRID

Many of us love to live and vacation near the coast. But as coastal zones experience dramatic demographic and socio-economic development, there are also growing and conflicting demands on the natural resources of coastal areas. This leads to often irreversible degradation of natural resources, which severely limits the potential for further development.

In parallel with this, expanding human activity is placing increased pressure on groundwater reserves, an issue heightened by seawater intrusion and salinization of coastal aquifers and soils, leading to major threats for food production and natural resources protection.

To help manage these issues a team from the Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia and the University of Padua, Italy, have developed CODESA-3D, standing for “Coupled variable Density and Saturation 3-Dimensional model.”

CODESA-3D is a simulation tool for managing seawater intrusion in costal aquifers, and one of the first applications to be deployed on the EUMEDGRID e-infrastructure.

The application models flow and solute transport in variably saturated porous media on unstructured domains.

CODESA-3D was deployed on EUMEDGRID in collaboration with a larger project, SWIMED (Sustainable Water management In MEDiterranean coastal aquifers).

In this framework, researchers are studying the sustainable management of groundwater exploitation using Monte Carlo simulations of seawater intrusion into the Korba aquifer in Tunisia. The base software for this study is deployed at all EUMEDGRID sites.
 
Tools like CODESA-3D can prevent environmental damage by contributing to sustainable management of coastal areas and aquifiers, and can also contribute to long-term policy analysis and strategic decision-making for integrated and sustainable long-term coastal development.

- Giuseppe la Rocca, GILDA, and Giuditta Lecca, Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia

Read more of CODESA-3D in iSGTW...