Salt contamination of water supplies in tidal rivers is a growing problem around the world, threatening the safe drinking water of billions of people, according to researchers at Penn State. Those researchers are part of a multi-institution team of scientists and engineers who were recently awarded $650,000 in funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop tools to help monitor and manage decision-making to address this critical issue.

Raymond Najjar, professor of oceanography and one of the co-principal investigators, said the team will develop a new coupled watershed-estuary model that simulates the transport and fate of major salt ions by leveraging recent advances in hydrological and estuarine modeling. They plan to use the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers as a pilot study site to better understand the saltwater intrusion process.

“It’s unusual to have watershed and estuary models coupled in real time,” Najjar said. “It’s not unusual to simulate the conditions of the estuary, given the output of a hydrological model or using observed data like streamflow, but it is unusual to link and run the models together.”

The project was one of 15 multidisciplinary teams selected for Phase 1 of the NSF Convergence Accelerator program’s Track K: Equitable Water Solutions. The Convergence Accelerator program builds upon NSF’s investment in basic research and discovery to accelerate solutions toward societal and economic impact. The Penn State team also includes Alfonso Mejia, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-principal investigator, and Antonia Hadjimichael, assistant professor of geosciences.

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