Cellular automata simulation of saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifer

Abstract

The wasteful consumption of freshwater in heavily populated coastal areas usually consist the basic reason for the intrusion of saltwater into the coastal aquifers. In order to avoid such catastrophic scenarios, their prediction is of utter significance. Underground water systems are highly complex and the water flow is extremely dynamic, thus making the prediction of this phenomenon a difficult task. For this reason, a two dimensional Cellular Automaton (CA) was designed enabling both the qualitative and quantitative simulation and illustration of the saltwater intrusion into an unconfined coastal aquifer. The presented results ensure the robustness of the proposed CA model taking full advantage of its inherent parallelism and local connectivity.

Keywords:

• Cellular automata
• modeling
• saltwater intrusion
• coastal aquifer

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to D. Chatziagorakis, who offered its continuous guidance and support via his remarkable knowledge of the hydrogeological phenomena throughout the duration of this study.

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.