Optimal pumping regimes in an unconfined coastal aquifer

Simple analytical models, containing a manageable number of parameters, can be set up to describe the decline in groundwater storage associated with increasing development of an unconfined aquifer. In the case of a coastal aquifer, at higher levels of development, abstraction (especially during the summer period) must increasingly take place at sites remote from the coast. Such sites are termed storage sites and their use avoids the problems of saline encroachment. The precise way in which, at least under annually cyclic conditions, the abstraction must be moved away from sites close to the coastal margins — termed leakage sites) as optimum development approaches can also be investigated using such models.