Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Salinization of the Coastal Plain through Saltwater Intrusion - Landscapes in Transition along the Leading Edge of Climate Change

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Ocean waters are infiltrating and influencing freshwater-dependent coastal landscapes due to a combination of human and natural factors. By the end of this century, lower-lying parts of the outer edge of the Southern U.S. coastal plain will be largely inundated by saltwater due to gradual sea level rise. The salinization of surface waters and adjacent lands may lead to significant reductions in crop and timber yields in managed ecosystems, significant declines in ecosystem carbon sequestration in unmanaged ecosystems, and degradation of coastal water quality due to extraction of soil nutrients by seasalts. This project will enhance understanding of the coupled human and natural processes influencing salinization of surface waters and adjacent lands. Investigators will build and engage a coalition of expert stakeholders, including members of state and local governments, regional planning groups, landowners and advocacy organizations. Partnerships with stakeholders will help investigators define the current status of coastal ecosystems, identify critical knowledge gaps, share new research findings, and develop and explore future land use and climate scenarios. This project will yield outcomes with predictive value in coastal systems that are easily understood by stakeholders while representing complex interactions between climate, hydrology, land use, and ecological processes and identify pathways by which outcomes could be used to enhance coastal sustainability. Together, these activities will help guide sustainable management of this region and similarly affected regions over the next several decades to centuries. Additional broader impacts include training four Ph.D. students in interdisciplinary research that spans natural and social sciences, engaging undergraduate students in mentored research experiences, and broadening participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences by supporting early career investigators and working to recruit students from underrepresented groups. This project is supported as part of the National Science Foundation's Coastal Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability program - Coastal SEES.This project focuses on saltwater intrusion, the landward movement of salinity from the coast onto the coastal plain. A team of investigators representing four disciplines (hydrology, biogeochemistry, community ecology, regional planning) will integrate social, hydrological, climate and ecological data into model scenarios to examine not only how human decisions affect ecosystems but also how information about those ecological impacts in turn affect human decisions. This project will facilitate development, validation and refinement of a saltwater intrusion vulnerability index (SIVI) for the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula of North Carolina that accounts for physical environmental processes influencing the movement of water and solutes across the landscape as well as the extensive networks of canals, ditches, roads and pump stations that fundamentally alter the flow of water across the region. The index will be used, along with extensive and repeated ground-based surveys of surface water, soil and vegetation conditions across a range of vulnerable landscapes within the region, to better understand ecological impacts of saltwater intrusion. Through workshops and surveys for landowners, managers and other stakeholders in the region, the project will reveal the likely impact of land-use decisions on saltwater intrusion under scenarios of climate change.