Ideas and perspectives: Land-ocean connectivity through groundwater

For millennia, humans have gravitated towards coastlines for theirresource potential and as geopolitical centres for global trade. A basicrequirement ensuring water security for coastal communities relies on adelicate balance between the supply and demand of potable water. Theinteraction between freshwater and saltwater in coastal settings is,therefore, complicated by both natural and human-driven environmentalchanges at the land-sea interface. In particular, ongoing sea-level rise,warming and deoxygenation might exacerbate such perturbations. In thiscontext, an improved understanding of the nature and variability ofgroundwater fluxes across the land-sea continuum is timely yet remains outof reach. The flow of terrestrial groundwater across the coastal transitionzone and the extent of freshened groundwater below the present-dayseafloor are receiving increased attention in marine and coastal sciencesbecause they likely represent a significant yet highly uncertain componentof (bio)geochemical budgets and because of the emerging interest in thepotential use of offshore freshened groundwater as a resource. At the sametime, "reverse" groundwater flux from offshore to onshore is of prevalentsocio-economic interest, as terrestrial groundwater resources arecontinuously pressured by over-pumping and seawater intrusion in many coastalregions worldwide. An accurate assessment of the land-ocean connectivitythrough groundwater and its potential responses to future anthropogenicactivities and climate change will require a multidisciplinary approachcombining the expertise of geophysicists, hydrogeologists, (bio)geochemistsand modellers. Such joint activities will lay the scientific basis forbetter understanding the role of groundwater in societally relevant issuessuch as climate change, pollution and the environmental status of thecoastal oceans within the framework of the United Nations SustainableDevelopment Goals. Here, we present our perspectives on future researchdirections to better understand land-ocean connectivity through groundwater,including the spatial distributions of the essential hydrogeologicalparameters, highlighting technical and scientific developments and brieflydiscussing the societal relevance of that connectivity in rapidly changing coastal oceans.