Numerical modeling of seawater intrusion into endorheic hydrological systems

Several groundwater endorheic base levels are known in different parts of the world. Some of them allow seawater encroachment into them. Two examples of such groundwater systems, at Lake Asal in the Afar Depression of East Africa and Lago Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, have been modeled using FEFLOW. The simulated flow pattern reproduces the seawater encroachment all the way from the sea to the endorheic base level. When the water in that base level undergoes concentration to brine through evaporation, the dense brine starts to flow below the encroaching seawater body in the opposite direction toward the sea. These processes reach steady-state conditions in a relatively short time of several hundred years.