Coastal aquifers involve varying conditions in time and space, owing to the occurrence of free and moving boundaries, such as the water table, seepage face and saltwater intrusion interface. A fast Updating Procedure (FUP) is developed for solving these interfaces in steady and transient conditions with the finite element method. Several test examples, which involve confined and phreatic ground...

A numerical model is developed to examine coastal groundwater processes in a sandy beach, including the effects of tidal fluctuations, saltwater intrusion into an aquifer, and dynamics in unsaturated layers. The simulation results indicate: 1) ‘Local circulation’ is clearly formed in the aquifer near the shoreline owing mainly to tidal oscillations. 2) The circulation induces a landward bending...

By means of a series of borehole resistivity measurements and a resistivity±salinity relation, a particular salt-freshwater inversion was found under the shore with semi-diurnal tides at the French±Belgian border. These resistivity data provide valuable information about the vertical variation of the saltwater percentage in di€erent boreholes. At di€erent places and depths ̄uctuations of freshwa...

Saltwater tolerance is a trait that carries both ecological and epidemiological significance for Anopheles mosquitoes that transmit human malaria, as it plays a key role in determining their habitat use and ecological distribution, and thus their local contribution to malaria transmission. Here, we lay the groundwork for genetic dissection of this trait by quantifying saltwater tolerance in thr...

The significance of salinity in shaping bacterial communities dwelling in estuarine areas has been well documented. However, the influences of other environmental factors such as dissolved oxygen and nutrients in determining distribution patterns of both individual taxa and bacterial communities inhabited local estuarine regions remain elusive. Here, bacterioplankton community structures of sur...

How plants arrived to originally sterile oceanic islands has puzzled naturalists for centuries. Dispersal syndromes (i.e., diaspore traits that promote dispersal by long-distance dispersal vectors), are generally considered to play a determinant role in assisting island colonization. However, the association between diaspore traits and the potential vectors by which diaspores are dispersed is n...