The Influence of Geologic Heterogeneity on Groundwater Salinity and Aquifer-Ocean Exchange on the Scale of the Continental Shelf

Exchange of water between aquifers and the ocean critically affects the quality of coastal groundwater resources and modifies ocean chemistry on both short and long timescales. Fresh groundwater has been shown to exist far offshore, and this is a potential future resource. However, controls on the origin of offshore freshened groundwater and the timescale over which it responds to hydrologic change are not well known. Further, high rates of saline groundwater discharge have been observed directly nearshore and with tracers across continental shelves, but the physical explanation for these large fluxes is not well established. Steady-state variable-density groundwater flow and solute transport simulations incorporating geostatistically-generated distributions of aquifer lithology were performed to explore the role of geologic heterogeneity in large-scale coastal groundwater flow and solute transport processes. Results indicate that heterogeneity critically affects both salinity distributions and aquifer-ocean exchange. The position, size, and variability of the mixing zone are influenced by the shore-perpendicular connectivity of the geologic structure. Submarine groundwater discharge extends further offshore and is more highly variable in heterogeneous relative to equivalent homogeneous simulations, and this effect increases with connectivity. The circulation of saline groundwater is consistently higher in heterogeneous simulations relative to homogeneous regardless of aquifer connectivity, increasing up to several orders of magnitude. These simulations suggest that heterogeneous aquifers with high geologic connectivity can result in significant volumes of freshened groundwater accompanied by fresh and saline discharge tens to hundreds of kilometers offshore along the continental shelf, even under present-day equilibrium conditions. The complicated flow fields and salinity distributions resulting from geologic heterogeneity contribute to high rates of saline circulation driven by complex density gradients, as well as groundwater discharge far offshore. Thus geologic heterogeneity provides a potential explanation for both the presence of fresh groundwater far offshore and high groundwater discharge rates commonly observed along continental shelves.