Challenges in GWI: Saline Intrusion
Challenges in GWI: Saline Intrusion In this blog I want to focus on one of the most challenging areas of management for groundwater irrigation; coastal aquifer resource management. As we have previously discussed, groundwater is an incredibly important development resource in Africa, but this development has to be sustainable. In coastal East Africa, specifically coastal areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Comoros, there is a heavy reliance on large aquifers. An aquifer is a large underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, unconsolidated materials or rock fractures from which groundwater can be extracted. The resource is theoretically infinite, however we will go on to discuss the fact that the availability of this resource is determined by societal factors, as well as by physical and environmental factors ( Comte et al, 2016 ). The latter of which dictating the ultimate renewability of the resource. As previously discussed, aqu...