Tide-induced groundwater fluctuation in a coastal leaky confined aquifer system extending under the sea

Abstract

This paper presents the analytical solution of groundwater response to tidal fluctuation in a coastal multilayer aquifer system consisting of a leaky confined aquifer, a semipermeable layer, and an unconfined aquifer. The semipermeable layer, or the roof of the leaky confined aquifer, extends under the sea. Comparisons are made with solutions derived previously, which considered only a single aquifer, zero extension of the roof, or infinite roof length, and demonstrate that the previous solutions are special cases of the solution presented here. A hypothetical example is used to discuss the impact of the dimensionless roof length, dimensionless leakage, and tidal efficiency on the groundwater level fluctuations in the inland part of the confined aquifer. The fluctuation decreases significantly with the roof length when the roof length is small but is insensitive to the change of roof length when the roof length is greater than a threshold. The impacts of leakage from the offshore and inland portions of the confining unit are different. Leakage from the offshore portion tends to increase the fluctuation of the groundwater level, while leakage from the inland portion tends to decrease the fluctuation. The fluctuation increases as the tidal efficiency increases. This fact is significant only when the roof length is great and leakage is small.