Solutions-Centered Data to Address Water Quality Threats: The SaltWatch Dashboard

By Peggy Chen, Duke + NCSSM Summer Internship

Explore the dashboard yourself here, and if you would like to, we welcome anonymous feedback through this form. 

Sea level rise and saltwater intrusion (SWISLR) act together to collectively alter socio-ecological systems on coastlines. There’s a lot of work required of scientists and coastal residents to make solutions work – and even then, it’s an uphill battle to combat an issue with such an extensive scope of effects. This summer I worked in the Bernhardt Lab with Kiera O’Donnell and Heili Lowman helping with a SWISLR RCN project that addressed SWISLR solutions holistically. 

​The overarching goal that guides this project is to quantify perceived and actual water quality risks due to SWISLR for rural coastal communities in North Carolina. This is invaluable to understanding and sharing the future actions residents in these vulnerable areas can take to safeguard themselves and their families from the threats of SWISLR. 

But before we can get started on testing water quality and guiding community discussions, we wondered: what has already been done to address coastal water quality threats? We were especially interested in how human infrastrucutre like septic and well water systems were at risk. These systems are hypothesised to be compromized with the rising saltwater but there is not a clear answer to how much water is too much water for these coastal systems. Scientists may be able to estimate an answer based on the literature they read or produce, but for informing on the ground solutions and actions this isn’t such an easy question to answer. 

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