Development of Decision Support Systems for Estimating Salinity Instrusion Effects due to Climate Change on the South Carolina and Georgia Coast
Year: 2010
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Salinity intrusion results from the interaction of three principal forces -streamflow, mean tidal water-levels, and tidal range.To analyze, model, and simulate hydrodynamic behaviors at critical coastal gage locations along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and Waccamaw River near Myrtle Beach, SC, and Savannah River near Savannah, GA, data-mining techniques were applied to over twenty years of hourly streamflow, coastal water-quality, and water-level data.Artificial neural network (ANN) models were trained to learn the specific variable interactions that cause salinity intrusions.Streamflows into the estuarine systems are input to the models as time-delayed variables and accumulated tributary inflows.Tidal inputs to the models were obtained by decomposing tidal waterlevel data into a "periodic" signal of tidal range and a "chaotic" signal of mean water levels.The ANN models were able to convincingly reproduce historical salinity dynamic behaviors in both systems.For a 7 ½ year simulation period, preliminary model results near a municipal freshwater intake on the Savannah River indicate that a sea-level rise of 1 foot (ft, 30.5 centimeters [cm]) increases the number of days from zero to 47 that brackish water occurs, or 2 percent of the time.A 2-ft rise increases days of brackish water from zero to 278 days, or 12 percent of the time.The 1-and 2-ft sea-level rise would shift the portion of the estuary by I-95 during periods of low streamflow from a tidal freshwater system (less than 0.5 psu) to an oligohaline system (less than 5.0 psu).
Source: TigerPrints (Clemson University)
Language: English
Subfield: Environmental Engineering
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W754689176