Author(s): Adam Hobson; Alex Hing

Linked Author(s): Adam Hobson

Keywords: Water monitoring groundwater climate resiliency saltwater intrusion flooding sea level rise coastal inundation telemetry remote monitoring water level water quality climate change seasonal variation

Abstract: Climate change impacts are closely linked to water, with rising temperatures driving sea level rise, altering precipitation patterns, and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as floods, droughts, and storms. These changes significantly affect both the quantity and quality of water resources, with cascading effects on people, ecosystems, infrastructure, and essential services. To adapt to and build resilience against these challenges, it is crucial to assess exposure, vulnerability, and risk to water assets. A key tool for this process is the availability of reliable, accessible, and understandable water data. Traditionally, adaptation efforts have relied on qualitative methods using projections from global or regional models, which, while efficient, lack the localized granularity needed for actionable insights. Localized water data is essential for developing targeted adaptation strategies and better understanding the hydrologic impacts of climate change. However, barriers such as high costs, complexity of monitoring systems, data reliability issues, and labor-intensive data management have historically limited data collection efforts. This presentation will explore practical, cost-effective solutions to these challenges, featuring examples of reliable continuous groundwater monitoring systems that can enhance data accessibility and support more effective climate adaptation and resilience planning. 1. Introduction Most impacts from climate change are related to water. Escalating temperatures are causing sea level rise, altering precipitation patterns, and intensifying the occurrence and duration of extreme events like floods, droughts, and storms. These hazards and stressors significantly affect both the quantity and quality of water resources, creating a cascade of effects that extend to people, resources, ecosystems, infrastructure, and the services they provide. To effectively adapt to and build resilience against the challenges posed by climate change, requires understanding the exposure and assessing the vulnerability and risk to these assets. A critical tool to enhance this understanding and assessment is reliable, authoritative, and understandable water data. Traditionally, organizations initiate the adaptation and resilience building process with qualitative methods that are based on projections developed with global or regional models. While rapid and effective, this method lacks the granularity required to assess the specific impacts of climate change at actionable scales. Gathering and ensuring accessibility to localized water data can provide essential information needed to craft effective adaptation and resiliency strategies and gain deeper insights into the hydrologic effects of climate change. Historically, perceived barriers related to water monitoring and data accessibility have hindered data collection efforts. The complexity of setting up and operating water monitoring systems, their perceived excessive cost and maintenance demands, data reliability concerns, and labor-intensive nature of data management and interpretation have limited the range of parameters measured, the frequency of readings, and the spatial coverage of monitoring sites. 2. Methods The Water Replenishment District (WRD), a groundwater management agency, and the City of Miami Beach, a municipality, are both adapting and building resilience to climate change impacts based on local, continuous water monitoring networks that are easy to use, economical, and reliable. The WRD is the largest groundwater management agency by population in the United States. Located along the Pacific coast, groundwater is sourced primarily from freshwater coastal aquifers which are recharged naturally and through managed aquifer recharge with recycled water and stormwater capture. In the past several decades, the agency has faced unprecedented extremes in droughts and floods, sea level rise, and population growth and development which have all impacted the agency’s ability to provide a reliable supply of high-quality groundwater. Recognizing the local impacts of these hazards and stressors and the need for adaptation and resiliency measures, the agency deployed a local water monitoring network to better understand the hydrologic system, impacts of these hazards, and the effectiveness of their mitigation and enhancement efforts. The agency measures water level, temperature, salinity, and other water quality parameters in most of their 350 wells across an area of almost 1,100 square kilometers. At most sites, data are transmitted by telemetry directly to their database system. The City of Miami Beach is located on a low-lying barrier island on the southeast Atlantic coast of the United States. Like many coastal cities and small islands around the world, Miami Beach is at risk of flooding from sea level rise, storm surges, and extreme precipitation. In addition to direct flooding, sea level rise, storm surges, and extreme precipitation can also raise groundwater levels, increase saltwater intrusion, and increase the risk of flooding from precipitation by reducing infiltration capacity. To adapt and develop resilient solutions to these changing conditions, the city deployed a local groundwater monitoring network to understand the unique nature of their hydrologic system. The monitoring network consisted of water level, temperature, and salinity sensors in 42 wells at 14 sites across the city with each site equipped with an easy to set up telemetry unit that securely transmits data to a cloud data management service. 3. Results and Discussion The continuous groundwater monitoring networks of the WRD and the City of Miami Beach are providing essential data to understand the exposure and assessing the vulnerability and risk to people, resources, ecosystems, infrastructure, and the services they provide. • Continuous groundwater level and quality data measured by the WRD and used for: • Daily operations planning of injection wells to prevent and mitigate saltwater intrusion • Planning of pumping • Developing and refining local groundwater models for forecasting water supplies • Planning and assessing various projects to create a sustainable and resilient water supply Continuous groundwater level and salinity data are measured by the City of Miami Beach and used by city engineers and others for: • Designing and optimizing an effective stormwater management system • Assessing the effectiveness of raising street heights • Proposing and accelerating passage of city ordinance to raise seawall heights • Refining numerical models for planning and decision-making processes • Assessing performance and effectiveness of pump stations • Defining risk to infrastructure from saltwater intrusion While having reliable, authoritative, and understandable water data is essential to effectively adapt to and build resilience against the impacts of climate change, a bigger challenge is the perceived barrier of collecting and accessing data. Both organizations did not have the capacity in terms of knowledge and staff to install a complicated system, maintain it, and manage the large volume of data. In these cases, the organizations selected a monitoring system that was designed to work together from the sensors, the cables, the telemetry, and the data management system. The system was developed to be simple to set up and use, have an overall low cost of ownership, including trips to the field and maintenance, include reliable instrumentation and sensors that are purpose-built to work in difficult conditions, and include an efficient, data management system. 4. Conclusion Climate change affects the quantity and quality of water resources. However, the impacts to specific assets are often at a local scale. Local water monitoring systems play a pivotal role in assessing and mitigating the impacts of flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion, and rising temperatures. By offering reliable, authoritative, and easily interpretable water data, they are essential tools in enhancing climate adaptation and fortifying resilience strategies. These objectives can be achieved through water monitoring systems that are simple to set up and use, have a low total cost of ownership, include reliable instrumentation that provide accurate field readings, and include an efficient data management system. These systems provide access to data that is accurate, comprehensive, and understandable to help stakeholders and decisionmakers adapt and build climate resiliency.

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Year: 2025