The objectives of this Statement of Need were to improve the fundamental and applied understanding of how: (1) future sea-level change interacts with other factors that govern the level of the subsurface water table spatially and temporally; (2) future sea-level change interactions impact saltwater intrusion spatially and temporally; and (3) scenarios can be developed that describe the combined interactions in a non-stationary climate and their impacts on subsurface infrastructure and assets at Department of Defense installations worldwide.

Specific research needs included the following:

1. Reduced-order subsurface water level models that incorporate sea-level change scenarios, total water levels, local groundwater associated with the unconfined aquifers, precipitation and runoff, and, where applicable, river discharge.
2. Reduced-order saltwater intrusion models that incorporate the information in Research Need 1 and salinity data to determine current conditions and future changes in local salinity profiles.
3. Development and application of broadly applicable and transferable subsurface exposure scenarios based on the modeling results from Research Needs 1 and 2 (supra) that correspond with sea-level change scenarios derived from the Defense Regional Sea Level database.

Proposals should have sought to address all three objectives and all three research needs to be competitive. The focus on reduced-order models reflects the need to avoid overly complex, data intensive, and computationally expensive models that lack transferability, while favoring models that maintain robust relationships to relevant physical processes and can incorporate local data when available. Proposers were encouraged to include a conceptual model that identified proposed and potential additional model components. Reduced-order model components should have had a demonstrated basis for inclusion in the final model (versus elimination). Uncertain components that required further investigation before they could be eliminated or included have been planned to be resolved within the first two years of funded work. Model development and analysis must have been proposed. In addition, evaluation and validation using simulation approaches could have been incorporated into the proposal but were not required. For climate change-dependent information (e.g., applicable future changes in precipitation patterns), proposals were expected to demonstrate an understanding of the appropriate use and limitations of available climate change information and their underlying modeling or analytical techniques.

Funded projects will appear below as project overviews are posted to the website.