Königshafen Submarine Groundwater Discharge Network (KiSNet) - first monitoring results from a multi-sensor and multidisciplinary approach

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) as a pathway for water and elements between land and ocean is a rather young topic and was for a long time neglected by the scientific community and coastal managers. However, the subject has increasingly attracted attention since the turn of the millennium. In this emerging field, measurement techniques and quantification methods strongly depend on individual research groups, but the high spatio-temporal variability of SGD, in general, leads to low confidence in its estimates at a regional scale.

The Königshafen Submarine Groundwater Discharge Network (KiSNet) seeks to form an interdisciplinary group of SGD experts to initiate and intensify collaborative ties across research groups. The aim is to bring together various methods from all disciplines to a common enclosed study area, Königshafen bay in Sylt, Germany. The strategy of measuring simultaneously results in a) a reliable groundwater picture of the bay, but also b) the possibility to suggest optimal combinations for qualitative and quantitative SGD methods that may serve as basis for a future more standardized SGD research.

Here we present first results from remote sensing, marine and terrestrial ground-based geophysics, seepage meters, temperature rods, natural tracers, numerical simulation from terrestrial and marine disciplines, and outline a preliminary concept of synergetic method combinations.