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Published on Friday, August 26, 2016

This Is One Side Effect of Climate Change You Haven’t Heard Of

[WHAT?!]

This Is One Side Effect of Climate Change You Haven’t Heard Of
This is one side effect of climate change you haven’t heard of 

A rising temperature means a host of changes in an ill-prepared world: rising sea levels, stronger storms, extinction of species. All will surely affect the lives of Earth’s inhabitants and all have been talked about by the media at great length. These posterboys of climate change results aren’t the only changes we’ll be seeing in the future though, as the side effects will also include far more nuanced outcomes. 

Saltier Sands

One such effect was recently documented and discussed in a study published by the journal Scientific Reports. Here, researchers discovered that our beaches will likely experience an increase in salt content due to the Earth’s rising temperatures, an environmental shift that will likely have far-reaching consequences.

The study’s researchers, based out of the New Jersey Institute of Technology or NJIT, examined the salinity of the “pore” water (water in the beach sediment) of one Delaware Bay beach and discovered salt levels were twice as high as the nearby ocean and almost four times as high in some areas. 

What does it all mean?

The significance of this finding comes from comparing the results with the expected findings. Researchers in the study were anticipating salt concentrations of about 25 grams per liter (g/L) at the high tide mark, equal to the concentration of the seawater. What they found however were concentrations of 60 g/L at the high tide mark and even as high as 100 g/L in certain areas.

How’d it happen?

The study proposes that such high levels of salinity can only be due to evaporation. Principal author of the paper and NJIT postdoctoral fellow Dr. Xiaolong Geng insists the “elevated levels can only be caused by evaporation, as there is no other mechanism for increasing the solt in pore water – the water trapped between the grains of sediment.”

One might be tempted to say that if evaporation is the culprit, they may have just taken samples during the hottest part of the day when the most evaporation occurs.  Conductors of the study anticipated this conclusion though by testing 400 different samples all taken at various times throughout both the day and the night. These spikes in salinity then aren’t just part of the daily salt ebb and flow, but rather are evidence of a trend, and are therefore grounds for concern.

The study goes on to suggest that climate change is probably a leading contributor to such a drastic change in pore-water salinity, and with this year being one of the hottest in recorded history, it’s not too much of a shock. 

Climate change wouldn’t just increase evaporation though. Researchers say that “an increase in temperature or a decrease in relative humidity – for example, due to climate change – would not only increase the pore-water salinity in the beach, but would also alter its spatial distribution,” both through rising sea levels and groundwater mixing.

Saltier beaches? So what?

While the exact impacts of increasingly salty beaches can’t be fully anticipated, Dr. Michel Boufadel, also involved in the study, points out that the most immediate impact will be for the fauna and flora of the beach itself. 

“Evaporation is an important driver of underground water flow and salinity gradients,” Boufadel says, “and animals such as mussels and crabs are affected by changes in salinity. If the concentrations are too high or too low, they will move away.” 

Anyone familiar with the complexity of an ecosystem is aware that if a foreign organism is introduced into an environment, the consequences can be disastrous, resulting in the extinction or migration of species and a resultant instability of the entire food chain. 

The same goes for if an essential organism, such as crabs or mussels, are removed from an ecosystem. If the relative salinity of beaches increases, driving out say crabs from the area, all the organisms that once hunted those crabs would either have to find a new source of food or leave as well. 

Think of it like a game of Jenga, but with much direr consequences. If a load bearing block (crabs) get pulled out, all the blocks above (birds, octopuses, certain mammals, etc.) would come crashing down as well. 

Not just the beaches…

One additional area of impact the study points out is how increasing salinity will affect inland freshwater coastal environments. While previous studies have “identified seawater as the primary source of salinity in coastal aquifer systems,” says Boufadel, the conclusions this study came to may suggest that the freshwater areas may experience an increase in salinity without direct contact with seawater through “seawater-groundwater mixing dynamics”.

To simplify, since pore-water mixes with (fresh) groundwater below the surface, it follows that an increase in pore-water salinity will likely increase the salinity of surrounding freshwater environments. This of course could lead to disastrous side effects in such an environment as most organisms there would be biologically suited for freshwater and would be unable to survive in such a system. 

The study goes on to suggest that such findings will hopefully “alter the way water management in coastal areas is conducted,” in addition to contributing to a more complete picture of a not-so-distant future. 
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Author: Ccarrell

Categories: Blogs, Why Go Green, Climate & Weather

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