1. Introduction
The integrated and sustainable management of water resources in small island countries is a fundamental issue for health and social well-being, protection of the environment and development of the economy. Here, it becomes a very high-level priority because of the strong limited nature of resources, worsened by climate change. Recently, White and Falkland [
1] provided an insight into the key climatic, hydrogeological, physiographic, and management factors that influence the quantity of fresh water and saline intrusion into small islands aquifers. The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) organization has evaluated the sustainability problems faced by its member countries in the Pacific Regional Action Plan [
2]. Falkland [
3] and White et al. [
4] described the main concerns that currently constrain the achievement of the goal of sustainable integrated water resources management in these countries: in many islands, there are insufficient hydrological data available for the analysis and planning of water governance reforms. Werner et al. [
5] have shown in their review of the state of knowledge of atoll island groundwater that over fifty years of investigation have led to important advancements in the understanding of atoll hydrogeology, but a paucity of hydrogeological data persists on all but a small number of atoll islands. The lack of data is usually due to the difficulties related to the accessibility and the lack of instruments for parameter survey. Other issues include conflicts related to the use of water resources and location of water supply systems on customary land, problems with design and implementation of projects, and insufficient community education, awareness and participation.
Water resources on small islands can be classified as either conventional or non-conventional [
6]. Conventional water resources include naturally occurring water such as surface water, groundwater, and rainwater. Non-conventional water resources involve a high level of technology and often high-energy consumption, such as desalination of seawater or brackish ground water, importation, or treated wastewater. Often, in small islands, lack of surface water and large periods of absence of precipitation make groundwater the only conventional and cheaper water resource available. Climatic projections suggest a dramatic amplification of droughts [
7], with significant effects on groundwater availability, as observed in many fractured-karsts aquifers all over the world [
8,
9,
10].
Groundwater occurs on small islands as either perched or basal aquifers [
11]. The first ones occur over horizontal confining layers (aquicludes), while the second ones, which are the most common form on small coral and limestone islands, consist of unconfined, partially confined or confined freshwater bodies, which form at or below sea level. On many small coral and limestone islands, the basal aquifer takes the form of a “fresh water lens” which can underlie the whole island (
Figure 1). These lenses of fresh groundwater accumulate from rainfall percolating through the soil zone and reside in fragile hydrodynamic equilibrium with the underlying saltwater, separated only by slight differences in density (transition zone). Basal aquifers are, indeed, vulnerable to saline intrusion owing to the freshwater-seawater interaction, and must be carefully managed to avoid over-exploitation and resultant increase of salt concentration in groundwater [
6]. However, as shown in this study, freshwater in small islands can also store next to the seashore, in the sandy parts of the coast. The hydrogeology of atoll aquifers (“dual aquifer” systems in the hydrologic literature) is unique, consisting of a surficial, relatively low-permeability Holocene carbonate sand aquifer lying on a higher permeability Pleistocene limestone or karst aquifer [
12]. The hydraulic conductivity of the Holocene aquifer, where the freshwater lens resides, is generally one to two orders of magnitude less than that of the underlying Pleistocene aquifer [
13]. As reported by Nakada et al. [
14], low permeability materials can suppress salinization and keep the groundwater relatively fresh and recharged by rainfall, even in low-elevation areas surrounded by saline water. Asymmetry is common in the lenses of atoll islands: the freshwater lens is commonly thicker on the lagoon side than on the reef side of the island and a cross-island variation in hydraulic conductivity is the usual explanation [
15].
Through field investigations, long term surveys and groundwater modeling on Nauru island, this paper means to understand the hydrogeological structures and the groundwater process that allow fresh water to store in that position. This aspect needs to be clarified in order to quantify the fresh groundwater resource and to understand if these freshwater lenses are resilient to saltwater intrusion even in drought periods. Generally, resilience describes the capability of a system to maintain its basic functions and structures in a time of shocks and perturbations and can continue to deliver resources and ecosystem services that are essential for human livelihoods [
16]. From the hydrogeological point of view, groundwater resilience defines the capability of the freshwater body to maintain its function of water supply even in periods of crisis as drought or not sufficient water supply from other resources. The time frame then should be the maximum crisis period length the hydrogeological system has so far experienced. The study of Nauru’s hydrogeology is a step toward the knowledge of groundwater circulation into highly permeable aquifers, underlain and surrounded by seawater, and could contribute to improving the global knowledge on water management in these particular and fragile environments.
Nauru is an isolated raised coral-limestone atoll island [
17] standing 4300 m above the ocean floor and located 41 km south of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean (
Figure 2).
In 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO) [
18], collaborating with Nauru public authorities, formulated a Long-Term Water Plan which has to be considered the starting point of any future water resources-related action. The main potential supply options identified by WHO for Nauru, also resumed in the National Sustainable Development Strategy 2005–2025 of Nauru [
19], are: (a) extraction of freshwater from the shallow part of the aquifer; (b) collection and storage of rainwater; and (c) additional desalination plants. Point (c) looks to be the hardest one to face, since it is strictly linked to the problem of additional power energy supply based on renewable energy instead of fuel. Until 2015, an effective national integrated water resource management plan for Nauru was missing [
20]. Then Nauru government published the Nauru Water and Sanitation Master Plan [
21]. The plan is proposing as main supply options: (a) the collection and storage of rainwater; (b) a limited use of groundwater; and (c) building a reticulation network linking each house to desalinated water. The suggested limited use on groundwater was mainly due to the lack of knowledge of groundwater resources availability on the island.
Politecnico di Milano has been involved in a project focused on a feasibility study for the development of infrastructures for sustainable use of groundwater resources in Nauru [
22]. The project, funded by Milano Municipality and related to EXPO 2015, aimed to seize the opportunity to enable the island to take an additional step toward a sustainable water supply, starting from the WHO results/directives [
18,
19,
20] and providing Nauru with a new and improved system for groundwater exploitation. The characterization and modeling approach described in next pages could be followed by Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean islands that suffer the same problem. The entire project consisted of three steps: (1) development of the conceptual site model through the geological and hydrogeological characterization of the island; (2) implementation of 2D and 3D density-dependent flow and transport groundwater numerical models on the part of the island, which turned out to be more suitable for the groundwater development; and (3) study and preliminary design of infrastructural actions for groundwater sustainable exploitation. This paper focuses on the first step of the project and on 2D model results analysis that have made possible to clarify the mechanism for storing freshwater next to the seashore.
1.1. Nauru: Overview of the Island
Nauru has an oval shape, with an extension of about 22 km
2, and its 30 km of coastline are surrounded by a fringing coral reef 120–300 m wide (
Figure 2). It is an independent state with a 2016 population of 9591 inhabitants. In the early 1980s, the island experienced a long economic wellbeing period thanks to the mining of the tricalcic phosphate deposits that originate from the droppings of sea birds. However, intensive phosphate mining has made 80 percent of Nauru’s land very unusable (
Figures S1–S3 in Supplementary Materials).
The climate of Nauru is hot and humid with mean daily temperatures of 29–31 °C and a mean minimum daily temperatures of 24–26 °C [
23]. Annual rainfall data from 1946 show a mean annual rainfall of about 2100 mm, with a high variability (
Figure S4 in Supplementary Materials). The wet season usually stretches from December to April, although El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events have a very strong impact on precipitation: a negative Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is in high correlation with periods of high rainfall (El Niño period); conversely a positive SOI indicates periods of drought (La Niña period) as reported by Falkland [
24]. El Niño phenomenon usually lasts for about 18 months and occurs on average every four years, although it is not completely predictable.
The total water for Nauru demand was estimated to be 1500 m3/day of potable water and 1000 m3/day of non-potable water. Today, potable water is supplied through the operation of the Nauru Phosphate Company (NPC) desalination plant in conjunction with the power station. This plant supplies 950 t/day of high quality potable water (1998/2001 data). Additional potable water is captured by houses through rainwater harvesting. The present supply of potable water can meet the population demand in rainy years, but not in dry years or when the plant runs low due to technical issues or the high oil prices.
The main concentration of groundwater wells is located along the coastline and around Buada Lagoon, where pumping or bailing are the methods used for water extraction. Groundwater is used in the island, even though in most wells it does not meet WHO drinking water standards set at 1000 mg/L of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) [
25]: consumption is mostly related to flushing toilets, showers and house work. However, during drought periods, it is used for wide purposes even in those areas where the TDS content is very high (e.g., for cooking/boiling and animals breeding). Acceptability of groundwater quality may vary not only according to the season but also depending on local circumstances: water tanks and rainwater harvesting systems maintenance, delays in delivery of desalinated water and people awareness about water quality/risks. For this reason, Jacobson et al. [
26] suggested to set an upper limit for drinking water at 1500 mg/L of TDS.
1.2. Previous Hydrogeological Studies
Several hydrogeological studies on Nauru Island have been conducted in the past but few of them are reported in scientific publications. Jacobson et al. [
26] have previously carried out hydrogeological studies of Nauru Island during the 1980s. The studies included core drilling, water electrical conductivity (EC) measurements inside drilled boreholes, and electrical sounding for determination of resistivity profiling on the island. The studies resulted in the construction of a conceptual model of the underlying geological units of the island and the distribution of groundwater with the location of freshwater/saltwater interface. From the analysis of core drilling samples [
27], the underlying rock resulted to be made up by limestone intensely karstified up to at least 55 m below sea level. The water table had an average level of 0.3 m above the sea level, with water flowing radially towards the sea.
The freshwater was evaluated to lay above a 60 m thick transition zone. The hypothesis made during these studies is that the thickness of mixed water may be due to high hydraulic conductivity of the limestone present in Nauru subsoil. As known, an important contribution to this high conductivity is the presence of karstic systems, which allow free and quick movement of seawater inland, behaving as a source of saltwater [
28]. Another factor responsible for the wide transition zone was detected in the tidal fluctuations, which ranged from 0.33 m below mean sea level to 0.51 m above sea level [
27]. A reversal of hydraulic gradient at the shoreline was identified, with drainage outwards at low tide, and seawater flow inwards at high tide. The tidal effects looked to have a significant influence on groundwater levels too, being about half of the amplitude of the ocean tidal stage throughout the island. Unlike the rest of the island, the Buada Lagoon levels had shown a lack of tidal response suggesting the idea that the lagoon is an independent system in which the lowering water levels could be potentially induced by evapotranspiration in drought periods [
26]. Jacobson and Hill [
27] in 1987 did a groundwater EC survey for determining the position of freshwater lenses in the island subsoil. Two large freshwater lenses (with thickness greater than 7 m) were firstly identified [
27], one located close to the Buada Lagoon depression, covering approximately 2.4 km
2, and the other on the north-central part of the island, extending for about 1.3 km
2. A threshold concentration of 1500 mg/L TDS was used for the localization and estimation of the freshwater lenses thickness [
29]. However, the freshwater lenses located in the Topside area seemed not to be resilient: by contrast to the first investigations, in 2008, Falkland [
24] performed a groundwater EC survey, after an extended dry period, showing very limited fresh groundwater resources, except for some boreholes by the northern coastal fringe in Ewa and Anetan districts, suggesting the possible presence in that area of a small freshwater lens resilient to sweater intrusion even in periods of droughts.
One of the most recent documents regarding groundwater assessment in the island is by Bouchet and Sinclair [
30]: an EC survey was taken in 283 domestic wells on the coastal fringe of the island in the period March–April 2010. Considering the water of those wells fresh with a value of electrical conductivity smaller than 2500 µs/cm, the study reported an average freshwater thickness in the coastal fringe of about 0.8 m. These measures were taken at the end of a period of 8 months with rainfall above the average value. This suggested a quite significant impact of rainfall on groundwater salinity and a quick response of the system to rainfall changes. The 2008 and 2010 surveys [
30] show that groundwater in Nauru is highly sensitive to climate variability, and therefore highly vulnerable, as already underlined by White and Falkland [
7,
31]. Nevertheless, the reason of the presence of these lenses was not clarified and the freshwater amount stored underground was not quantified.
4. Discussion
The hydrogeological characterization and the modeling activity carried out, albeit preliminary, have enabled to achieve important new results in comprehending the freshwater lens formation phenomenon in small islands.
In the case of Nauru Island, the investigations performed have unexpectedly allowed identifying the presence of freshwater lenses hosted into the sandy sediments of the coastal zone, close to the seashore. The monitoring activity, carried out for a six-year period, has moreover highlighted that these lenses are resilient even in drought conditions. This result is in contrast with the previous studies that, on the other hand, had identified freshwater lenses into the limestone forming the internal part of the island. The difference in the results is due to: (1) previous authors had carried out just a single survey corresponding to a particularly rainy period; and (2) their conceptual site model did not consider the presence of sandy sediments along the coastline. Thus, thanks to the data collected during this study, a new conceptual site model has been developed for Nauru, one presuming that the low hydraulic conductivity of sand makes the groundwater slow down toward the coast consequently allowing freshwater storage where saltwater is instead expected to penetrate more easily into the aquifer. This preliminary conceptual site model has been verified through a steady state 2D numerical model along a N-S oriented section. During periods with great rainfall, water easily infiltrates the subsoil because of the paucity of vegetation and the karst phenomenon that characterize the limestone making up the internal part of the island. Freshwater then flows in the high conductivity limestones (800 m/d) radially moving toward the coast and slowing down when it reaches the low permeability sands (40 m/d). Here, freshwater stores in lenses that remain protected from saltwater intrusion by the low hydraulic conductivity of the sediments. Unlike the case of the Topside, characterized by high hydraulic conductivity and dispersivity, the infiltrated rain quickly mixes with the deeper saltwater, thereby determining a fast disappearance of freshwater lenses in the periods with scarce rainfall distribution.
Three hydrogeological/geomorphological factors can be considered responsible for the large storage of fresh water in Nauru’s northern sector
The wind: During the humid season (November/April), the winds blow from the West, while, in the dry season, they come from East. This means that the northern and southern coastal zone are not particularly exposed to the wave action, and consequently there is a smaller erosion of the sands [
40].
The morphology and petrography of the coastal zone: The coastal zone has a variable width, from 400 m close to the airport to a few meters close to Anabar Bay. Near the S1 and S18 monitoring wells, the Bottomside width is 180 m and the sediments mainly consist of by carbonate sands. The main difference is linked to the thickness of sediments: in S1 and S18 the sediments are 15 m thick. Other boreholes in the Bottomside had shown that the basement is around 6 m from the ground level in the eastern sector, 10 m close to the airport and only 3 m in the Anibar bay. The elevated thickness of the sandy sediments in the northern zone is probably the cause of the groundwater slowing down and of storage. Here, the flow circulation is therefore different from the other zones where instead, due to the presence of karst tunnels, the groundwater flows rapidly toward the sea.
The bathymetry: Looking at the bathymetric maps of Nauru [
45], it is possible to notice that in the northern sector the sea bottom declines smoothly compared, for example, to the Anabar Bay zone where submarine cliff is present. That probably allows the decrease of wave intensity in the northern sector, thereby determining the sand sedimentation and the freshwater storage in the S1 and S18 area.
Comprehension of the way freshwater lenses form in the subsoil of small islands and how they behave is a fundamental aspect to be understood in order to achieve a sustainable development of groundwater. The Nauru experience show how, on small islands, with the aim to archive a proper groundwater management, a detailed aquifer characterization and an exhaustive implementation of the hydrogeological conceptual site model are necessary. Nevertheless, even for Nauru, the studies presented in this paper can not be considered sufficient to prepare a reliable groundwater management plan. The complete understanding of freshwater storage and its quantification would need a more accurate 3D modeling phase supported by data collection. In particular it would be useful a series of hydraulic conductivity tests to confirm the parameters used in the 2D modeling and some geo-electrical tomography campaigns to better assess the freshwater thickness along the coast. This new investigations have been designed for Nauru and will indeed allow: (i) a more precise simulation of the system behavior; (ii) a better comprehension of the role played by the sand sediment thickness in the different zones of the island; and (iii) an improved assessment of the volume of stored freshwater and its resilience capacity during drought periods. Furthermore, an unsteady state 3D model will constitute a useful tool for management of water resources, their protection from pollution and definition of a sustainable use of freshwater lenses avoiding saltwater intrusion increasing. Through this kind of model, it will possible to design new and tailored groundwater withdrawal systems, forecasting their effects on groundwater availability and on saltwater intrusion in different meteorological scenarios. This will allow optimizing their number, position, depth and pumping helping public authorities in preparing a groundwater management plan in the aim to achieve a sustainable development.
5. Conclusions
On Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean small islands, groundwater is an important, or the main, source of freshwater whose availability is often limited and whose quality is frequently compromised. The present study of Nauru’s hydrogeology is a step toward the knowledge of groundwater behavior into highly permeable aquifers, underlain and surrounded by seawater, and can contribute to improve the global knowledge on water management in these fragile systems. The study findings are mainly related to the following aspects:
Unlike generally assumed, small island aquifers can not only host continuous freshwater lens in the central part of the island, but, unexpectedly, freshwater storage can also occur next to the coastline. In Nauru case, long-term investigations carried out by authors, have shown that those lenses are resilient to saltwater intrusion even in drought periods.
A method to correct head measurements vs. tide has been proposed and applied to better characterize the groundwater flow patterns in small islands.
Thanks to the investigations and the numerical modeling, it has been possible to clarify the mechanism for freshwater storage next to the seashore and the role played by the hydrogeological structure and aquifers hydraulic conductivity.
In previous studies, the durability of freshwater lenses had not been proven yet; the characterization activities here presented cover a long period and show that freshwater lenses located along the coastline turn out to be resilient to drought and saltwater intrusion.
Despite the previous groundwater investigations, considering climate change, rising sea levels and increasing frequency of extreme events, there was a need for a more comprehensive assessment of groundwater potential on Nauru. The characterization presented in this study makes available new and more useful data related to the hydrogeological setting of the island. The results achieved have highlighted the existence of a fresh groundwater resource that can be exploited, in a sustainability perspective. The volume stored in the subsoil will have to be better quantified in the future both in the northern sector of the island and throughout the coast. Probably groundwater alone would not be sufficient to meet the needs of the Nauru population and therefore, as the island’s Water Plan suggests, the use of the groundwater must undoubtedly be combined with others water resources. However, the use of this resource alongside rainwater harvesting is an important resource to ensure the island’s future water security, even during periods of drought or desalination plant breakdown. Due to the vulnerability of fresh groundwater lenses, their use should be carefully managed in order to avoid any uncontrolled phenomena of saltwater intrusion and the overexploitation of the resource. Furthermore, at least where fresh groundwater is available, strict rules are necessary to avoid any pollution by anthropogenic activities (mainly cesspits/septic tanks and animals breeding). Groundwater is a natural resource that should be considered as public and shared resource for present and future generations, even more on small islands where are present some of the most vulnerable aquifer systems in the world. Fresh groundwater should not be freely exploited by any private entity without control, and it would be desirable that in the future the State would directly assume the responsibility for extracting and distributing water. Consequently, Nauru’s next Water Plan would have to addresses these issues, ruling groundwater exploitation and pollutant activities, as well as adopting a program of groundwater survey and monitoring wells maintenance.