Saltwater could contaminate drinking water over next century, NASA says.
Over the next century, three of four coastal communities will face the threat of saltwater contaminating drinking and irrigation water because of rising sea levels, according to NASA. It’s already happening along the Delaware Bay on the East Coast according with CBS News.
Watersheds on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard will be among the areas most affected by underground saltwater intrusion by the year 2100 due to sea level rise and changes in groundwater supplies, according to a NASA-DOD study.
NASA’s Terra satellite
Seawater will infiltrate underground freshwater supplies in about three of every four coastal areas around the world, according to a recent study led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In addition to making water in some coastal aquifers undrinkable and unusable for irrigation, these changes can harm ecosystems and corrode infrastructure.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, evaluated more than 60,000 coastal watersheds (land area that channels and drains all the rainfall and snowmelt from a region into a common outlet) around the world, mapping how diminished groundwater recharge and sea level rise will each contribute to saltwater intrusion while estimating what their net effect will be.
All told, due to the combined effects of changes in sea level and groundwater recharge, saltwater intrusion will occur by century’s end in 77% of the coastal watersheds evaluated, according to the study.
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