Saline sediment deposition in estuarine floodplains exacerbates vertical saltwater intrusion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• An agricultural field was contaminated following exposure to brackish flooding. • Marine-derived novel sediment deposited during flooding concentrated salinity. • Modeling and field results suggest the sediment deposits drove saltwater intrusion. • Removal of sediment by erosion enabled flushing and recovery of the underlying soil. Low-elevation coastal zones are increasingly exposed to flooding due to the effects of climate change. Inundation can lead to groundwater and soil degradation through saltwater intrusion. In transitional coastal areas, such as the upper reaches of estuaries, where floodwater is relatively fresh, flood-derived sediment deposits may provide an overlooked salinity source. A parcel of land in an estuarine floodplain was selected to assess the subsurface salinity response to episodic flooding. The site experienced intermittent inundation by low-salinity floodwater following a managed dike realignment, resulting in sediment deposition and alterations to the land surface topography. A three-year field campaign involving soil and water monitoring and geophysical surveying was conducted to map the subsurface response to the flooding, while aerial LiDAR was used to monitor geomorphologic changes. The development of a one-dimensional numerical model of coupled vertical water flow and solute transport informed by field data was applied to investigate the hypothesis that saline sediment deposits can drive saltwater intrusion in areas experiencing low-salinity flooding. Soil salt concentrations exceeded that of the floodwater by up to 50 times, while the highest salinization occurred preferentially in areas experiencing persistent deposition. Model simulations showed that novel sediments contributed to soil salinization for decades longer than the initial flood; however, the removal of these deposits through erosion could, in turn, drive soil recovery. This study suggests that marine-derived sediments may exacerbate saltwater intrusion in settings upriver from the marine coast and may help guide management decisions in coastal areas expected to undergo future flooding.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".