Groundwater Flow in Arid Tropical Tidal Wetlands and Estuaries

Monitoring of ground water in industrial areas, urban and residential, is already a common practice. However, what about the ground water in areas particularly in the arid, estuaries and saltflat? Five piezometers were installed in a saltflat area in Cocoa Creek, and mangrove forests in the Gordon Creek, Townsville Australia. Drillings were carried out with a depth of about 2 meters in both places to put the PVC pipes, which were part of the bottom side. The pipes were perforated to allow water to get into the pipe. In each PVC was installed a piezometer and a data logger to record the fluctuations of the water inside the pipe. Due to abundant presence of crabs in mangrove forests, there was a lot of crab burrows in the forest as well. Given these two conditions, it could eventually be determined the hydraulic conductivity of the sediments. Crab burrows were subsequently used for the determination of the hydraulic conductivity of the sediments in situ. In addition, with the presence of inundation due to high tide, the groundwater flow could be modelled.