ABSTRACT
Williams C. Burnett (Florida State University, USA) Tesuo Yanagi (Kyushu University, Japan)
From Headwaters to the Ocean – Taniguchi et al. (eds) © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-47279-1
M. Taniguchi∗ & T. Ishitobi Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan
W.C. Burnett Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, Florida, USA
ABSTRACT: We report here the first global-scale assessment of both fresh and saline groundwater discharges based solely on observational data. Prior estimates have been limited to various water balance and hydrodynamic modeling calculations and range over orders of magnitude. Our observations suggest that fresh groundwater discharge per unit shoreline length is ∼29 m3/m/d and recirculated seawater is ∼280 m3/m/d. On a worldwide scale, these flows represent ∼17% and ∼160% of the global river discharge. We show via automated measurements that precipitation and wave pumping are important controls of terrestrial (fresh) and marineinduced (recirculated seawater) subterranean flows, respectively.
