Vulnerabilities

Salinisation of soils might occur in coastal aquifers due to sea level rise and aquifer depletion, causing salt-water intrusion. This may have a major impact on irrigation management (1).

Along the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, storm surge and saltwater intrusion into aquifers threaten parts of the Croatian, Albanian, and Turkish coasts (2). Problems of saline intrusion would be further exacerbated by reductions in runoff and by increased withdrawals in response to higher demand. Excessive demand already contributes to saline intrusion problems in many coastal areas of Italy, Spain, Greece and North Africa (3).

Salt water intrusion due to sea-level rise is mostly a very slow process that may take several centuries to reach equilibrium (4). Even small rates of groundwater pumping from coastal aquifers are expected to lead to stronger salinization of the groundwater than sea-level rise during the 21st century (5).

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Spain.

1. Eisenreich (2005)
2. http://www.worldbank.org
3. Aru (1996), in: Karas (2000)
4. Webb and Howard (2011), in: IPCC (2014)
5. Ferguson and Gleeson (2012); Loaiciga et al. (2012), both in: IPCC (2014)