| Title: Groundwater Rise Caused by Sea Level Rise | |
| Time Period of Content: Unknown | Publication Date: April, 2019 |
| Originator: Jayne F. Knott, Ph.D. candidate; Jennifer M. Jacobs, Ph.D.; University of New Hampshire, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering | |
| Abstract: This resource was developed to assist municipalities, planners, researchers, and other stakeholders in planning for and adapting to rising groundwater caused by sea-level rise. The database contains projected groundwater rise caused by sea-level rise in the NH Seacoast region. The sea-level-rise (SLR) scenarios are 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 feet relative to the mean sea level (MSL) measured at the Fort Point tide gage in New Castle, NH. A regional groundwater flow model created by Thomas Mack of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2009 was updated and modified to investigate groundwater changes caused by SLR. Groundwater elevations for MSL and the SLR scenarios were calculated using USGS MODFLOW-2005. Groundwater rise was calculated by taking the difference between the simulated groundwater elevation for each SLR scenario and the groundwater elevation at MSL. Mean sea level is defined as 0.31 feet below NAVD88 measured at the Fort Point tide gage in 2016. The boundaries of the resource are the Gulf of Maine to the East, the Piscataqua Estuary to the North, the Squamscott River to the West, and the New Hampshire/Massachusetts border to the South. Groundwater rise is also expected to occur along coastlines outside the bounds of this resource. Note that while the NH Coastal Viewer legend displays groundwater rise values in feet, the data values reported by the Identify tool are thousandths of a foot. The groundwater modeling study upon which this resource is based is described in: Knott, J. F., Daniel, J.S., Jacobs, J., Kirshen, P., 2018. Modeling Groundwater Rise Caused by Sea-Level Rise in Coastal New Hampshire. Journal of Coastal Research. | |
| Theme Keywords: sea-level rise, groundwater rise | |
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