Saltwater Intrusion Vulnerability Assessment

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Under the Water Group’s Saltwater Intrusion Vulnerability Assessment project, Water Research Laboratory (WRL), University of New South Wales, were commissioned to develop hydrodynamic models for a series of river estuaries in NSW and to use these to model changes in estuarine salinity dynamics under sea level rise and possible changes to catchment hydrology.

The Tweed, Richmond, Clarence, Macleay, Hastings, Manning and Shoalhaven River estuaries were modelled under this project. For each estuary, three different sea level scenarios were modelled, a present-day sea level, a sea level increase of 0.20 m and an increase of 0.55 m. For the Richmond and Shoalhaven River estuaries, a series of hydrological sensitivity tests were also run to explore system sensitivity to changes in flow which may occur in future due to climate change.

For each of the seven River estuaries, the hydrodynamic models, modelling outputs and reports produced by WRL summarising methods and findings are available to download from the Related Datasets section below.

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