DISES RCN: SWISLR - Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise in rural landscapes: Assessing Risk and Identifying Mitigation and Adaptation Options for Rural Coastal Plain Communities

This project will bring together a cross-section of disciplinary experts, community leaders, and policymakers as a research coordination network to address the problems of rising sea-level and salt-water intrusion into coastal regions. Nearly all of the North American Coastal Plain is subject to rising sea levels, land subsidence, more severe hurricanes, and more intense droughts.

All four of these trajectories of change are leading to more frequent and higher magnitude inputs of marine salts into coastal plain soils. The penetration of salinity into the coastal interior is exacerbated by groundwater extraction and the high density of agricultural canals and ditches throughout much of the rural landscape. The resulting saltwater intrusion and sea-level rise represent significant challenges for the largely rural landscape and small communities throughout the North American Coastal Plain.

Loss of agricultural productivity and rapidly changing habitats in conservation areas may differentially impact disadvantaged rural populations and communities. These environmental justice issues are multi-generational, involving land availability, bank and agency lending practices, and race. The community of scholars and practitioners engaged in research and management of sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion will help develop plans to adapt to this expanding environmental change.

The decisions that coastal communities make in response to rapid environmental change will shape the future socioecological trajectory of US coastal plain landscapes.

The primary focus of the Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise (SWISLR) Research Coordinating Network is to build an integrated conceptual scaffolding that will expand the capacity to forecast and prepare for impacts throughout the rural communities of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America. In addition to variable rates of sea-level rise across the outer coastal plain, differences in geomorphic setting, water resources infrastructure and management, and climate extremes are generating very different patterns of saltwater intrusion.

Documenting both the absolute magnitude of this rapid environmental change, and the causes and consequences for its spatial and temporal variation, represent an opportunity to construct new mechanistic models that link directional climate change to temporally and spatially dynamic socio-environmental impacts. The diverse effects on various landscapes provide opportunities to examine modern theories of ecosystem state change in systems with exceptionally strong socioecological feedbacks.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.