Background

• Saltwater intrusion in Delaware River Basin (DRB)
• What role Inter-Basin Water Transfer (IBT) is playing

IBT in Delaware River Basin

A data-driven IBT scheme in MOSART-WM

An empirical relationship (R2=0.71) between the weekly maximum salt front position (SF, km from the estuary) and the weekly minimum river discharge (Q, cfs) at Trenton, NJ can be established based on the long-term observation from DRBC:
𝑆𝐹=278−4.4×log⁡(𝑄_𝑡 )−14.6×log⁡(𝑄_(𝑡−1) )

IBT Leads to Enhanced Saltwater Intrusion

• IBT could push the maximum salt front location upstream by nearly 8 km
• The findings also highlight the critical need to incorporate IBT into models that assess human impacts on large-scale hydrologic processes