CoastAdapt is a knowledge and innovation ecosystem for coastal engineering and coastal research in Lower Saxony. The initiative brings together universities, research institutions, public authorities, industry partners, and civil society to collaboratively address current and future challenges in coastal regions. Coastal areas are increasingly affected by climate change, economic development, and population dynamics, requiring continuous adaptation strategies. While valuable expertise already exists across many institutions, it is often distributed among individual activities. CoastAdapt strengthens cooperation by connecting scientific knowledge, practical experience, and data across disciplines. By bundling these capacities, the initiative supports the development of sustainable, science-based solutions for resilient coastal environments and communities.

The focus of Subproject 7, conducted by the Hydrogeology Research Group at University Oldenburg, is the model-based reconstruction of groundwater salinization along the northwestern German coast, resulting from prehistoric, historical, and potential future storm surge events. The objective is to quantify the impacts of individual storm surges on groundwater salinization and, thereby, enable robust assessments of the timescales associated with salinization and freshening processes in coastal groundwater systems. In particular, a systematic understanding is still lacking of the extent to which individual storm surge events have shaped the long-term evolution of groundwater salinization. Such knowledge is of critical importance for the protection of groundwater resources in the context of dike breaches and climate change.

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Dr. Stephan Seibert