Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Research papers

Impacts of sea-level rise on groundwater inundation and river floods under

changing climate
Xuan Yu a, d, Lu Luo a, e, Peng Hu b, *, Xinjun Tu a, d, Xiaohong Chen a, d, Junhong Wei c, d
a
Center for Water Resources and Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
c
School of Atmospheric Sciences and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519082,
China
d
Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai 519082, China
e
Water Resources Department of Hunan Province, Changsha 410007, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Rising sea levels increase coastal extreme events of inundation along the global coastlines. Existing hydrologic
Sea-level rise and groundwater models simulate inundation processes but simplify groundwater-surface water interactions, a
Coastal inundation key control on flood generation in coastal areas. Here we apply a coupled surface–subsurface hydrologic model
Groundwater inundation
to evaluate the sensitivity of shallow groundwater to sea-level rise across three watersheds in Southeast China. It
River flood
Marine inundation
was found that historical decrease of annual rainfall resulted in no changes in total water storage but lower
streamflow. Sea-level rise can increase low flow and local groundwater inundation, without changes in total
water storage. GIS analysis of elevation can give a first approximation of vulnerability to marine inundation. Our
physics-based modeling approach helped capture the temporal dynamics of water table and improved process
understanding on coastal flooding. This study provides a new insight to quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of
groundwater inundation and river floods across coastal watersheds.

1. Introduction coastal water levels along the US coastlines using a combination of

Coastal areas around the world host large populations and intense
economic activities. In China, coastal provinces have a population of
590 million and contribute 60 % of the nation’s GDP in 2010 (He et al.,
2014a). Meanwhile, coastal floods became a growing consensus and
worry on economic development (Czajkowski et al., 2018; Hallegatte
et al., 2013; Hino et al., 2019), agricultural management (Gould et al.,
2020; Xiao et al., 2021), and environmental sustainability (Sajjad et al.,
2018). Understanding regional spatiotemporal patterns of coastal floods
is essential for managing and protecting the growing lowland population
and precious environment since coastal flood risk and future sea-level
rise (SLR) fall disproportionally on different areas (Hooijer and Ver­
nimmen, 2021).
Statistical analyses of peak discharge and water levels have been
widely applied in flood risk management and for the design of structures
such as dykes and flood gates. Williams et al. (2016) found that the
seasonal relationship between high water levels and skew of surges was
critical in flood risk prediction. Veatch and Villarini (2020) analyzed
several statistical distribution models and found that the West Coast has
a main flood season in the winter, most likely from atmospheric rivers,
and a secondary flood season in the summer from tidal fluctuations
combined with seasonal mean sea level variations. Couasnon et al.
(2022) developed a framework to account for the seasonality of flood
drivers and their mutual dependencies using statistical and hydrody­
namic modeling. The results showed that neglecting the seasonality of
rainfall and sea level leads to an underestimation of the expected annual
flood damage by 72 % to 83 %. Without process-based understanding,
the non-linear responses of extreme events may cause meaningful un­
certainties in future flood risk (Arns et al., 2020). Therefore, it is
advocated that the inclusion of a physical understanding of flood
drivers’ dynamics can lead to comprehensive risk assessments of coastal
flooding.
Physically, several key factors control coastal flooding including
rainfall, sea levels, soil saturation, and groundwater inundation. These
mechanisms interact at different spatial and temporal scales, which
complicates coastal flood prediction. Practically, a certain degree of

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hp5426@126.com (P. Hu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128554

Available online 26 October 2022

0022-1694/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 1. Illustration of coastal inundation and river floods impacted by rising
sea levels.
simplification is required to effectively characterize coastal floods under
various sets of climate change and SLR scenarios. One simple algorithm
for mapping potential inundation areas in coastal zones is the bathtub
model (Fereshtehpour & Karamouz, 2018; Yin et al., 2017; Hauer et al.,
2021). It simply uses raster analysis and identifies the inundated cells
where the ground elevation is lower than the water surface elevation
and connected to the coast through flooding water (Carvalho and Wang,
2019). Lichter et al. (2011) explored data-related uncertainties in ana­
lyses of population exposure to coastal flooding. Hinkel et al. (2014) also
found that estimates of land and population exposure to SLR and coastal
flooding vary significantly according to which datasets are employed.
Fig. 2. Geospatial data of study area: a) Rivers of three watersheds and the location in Guangdong, China, b) elevation, c) soil map and d) land cover.
2
Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
Nevertheless, these raster analysis methods can give a first approxima­
tion of vulnerability to coastal flooding (Kulp & Strauss, 2019; Hooijer
and Vernimmen, 2021; Edmonds et al., 2020).
Hydrodynamic simulation can be effective in consideration of water
level attenuation in coastal flooding. Yin et al. (2019) employed hy­
drodynamic models to assess potential coastal flood risk with consid­
eration of coastal flood return periods, local sea-level rise projections,
and long-term ground subsidence projections. Saharia et al. (2021)
integrate a hydrodynamic model and the copula theorem to generate
inundation maps with different return periods of seiche and flow
considering the scenarios of rainfall and tide levels. Qiu et al. (2022)
developed a set of hydrodynamic simulation scenarios for a range of
river flow and coastal water level regimes, SLR projections, and typhoon
intensities. These surface hydrological modeling approaches are very
efficient regarding their less computational burden (Bates et al. 2005)
and can be efficiently applied in large coastal watersheds (Mohanty
et al.,2020).
In coastal watersheds, SLR has been found influential on ground­
water table elevation, soil saturation, and infiltration rates, which are
critical in driving floods across the landscape. Increasing evidence
suggested higher water table elevation results in more frequent flood-
prone coastal areas and seasons (Qiang et al., 2021; Befus et al., 2020;
Hoover et al., 2017). Therefore, groundwater table dynamics and
inundation should be considered in assessing the impacts of SLR on
coastal flooding. But it is not always clear how groundwater dynamics
can be considered to assess risks and impacts on different coasts and
cities vulnerable to flooding (Nicholls and Cazenave, 2010; Cazenave
and Cozannet, 2014).
Numerical simulations can effectively inform us of the vulnerability
of groundwater inundation to SLR with improved process understand­
ing. One common approach is to set up coastal groundwater models and
X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Fig. 3. PIHM model discretization at three watersheds and corresponding hydrological processes.

Table 1
Main equations of PIHM.
Process Governing equation/model Original governing equations Semi-discrete form *

Interception Bucket model dh dh0I

= P − Ec − P t = Pv − Ec − Pt
dt dt
Snowmelt Temperature index model dh dh0s
= P − Esnow − Δw = P − Esnow − Δw
dt dt
Evapotranspiration Penman-Monteith approach (εs − εa ) (εs − εa )
Δ(Rn − G) + ρa Cp Δ(Rn − G) + ρa Cp
ra ra
ET0 = rs ET0 = rs
Δ + γ(1 + ) Δ + γ(1 + )
ra ra
Overland flow St. Venant equation ∂h ∂(uh) ∂(vh) dh1 ∑
+ + =q = Pn − q+ − e + 3j=1 qsj
∂t ∂x ∂y dt
Unsaturated flow Richard equation ∂ψ dh2
C(ψ ) = ∇(K(ψ )∇(ψ +Z) θs = q+ − q0
∂t dt
Groundwater flow Richard equation dh3 ∑3 g
θs = q0 − j=1 qj
dt
Channel flow St. Venant equation ∂h ∂(uh) dh4,5 ∑2 ( s g)
+ =q = j=1 ql +ql + qcin − qcout
∂t ∂x dt
Seaside boundary Hydrostatic equilibrium 5 5
h3 (h − hsea )/L h1 3 (h1 − hsea )/L
=q =q
ns T1/2 ns T1/2

*Notation: h0I is the vegetation interception storage, Pv is the total precipitation, Ec is the evaporation from canopy interception. h0S is the snow water equivalent
storage, P is the solid precipitation water equivalent, Δw is snow-melting rate. Δ is the slope of the saturation vapor pressure–temperature relationship, Rn is net
radiation at the vegetation surface, G is soil heat flux density, εs − εa represents the air vapor pressure deficit, and ρa is the air density, Cp is specific heat of the air, γ is
the psychometric constant, rs and ra are the surface and aerodynamic resistances. h1 is the shallow water depth above the ground surface, pn , q+ and e are throughfall,
infiltration, and evaporation, respectively, qsj is the normalized lateral flow rate from element i to its neighbor j. θs θs is the moisture content, h2 is the unsaturated
g
storage depth, h3 is the groundwater depth, q0 is flux between unsaturated–saturated zone, qj is the normalized lateral groundwater flow rate from element i to its
g
neighbor j. h4,5 is depth of water in the channel or beneath the channel, qsj and qj are the lateral surface flow and groundwater interaction with the channel respectively
from each side of the channel or beneath the channel, the upstream and downstream flow for each channel segment or beneath the channel are qcin and qcout qcout
respectively. hsea is the sea level. L is the distance between the center of the surface triangle to the seaside boundary. ns is the Manning’s roughness. T is the surface slope
of the triangular element.

then rise the seaside hydraulic head to project SLR scenarios. Sukop
et al. (2018) applied cross-section groundwater models to project future
groundwater-induced flooding. The projected simulation suggested that
the inland influence of tidal fluctuations appears to increase due to SLR
but groundwater recharge due to rainfall events is still the principal
driver of high groundwater levels under the 2060 scenario conditions.
Habel et al. (2017) developed a groundwater model to map sea-level
rise-induced groundwater inundation. The result showed that half of
the Waikiki area of Honolulu, Hawaii will likely experience either
chronic groundwater inundation or episodic flooding. These methods

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X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Table 2
Sources and characteristics of DEMs.
Source Abbreviation Spatial Observation period Digital object identifier
resolution

Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission SRTM 30 m February 11–22, 2000 https://doi.org/10.5066/F7PR7TFT
Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and ASTER 30 m 2000–2007 https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/AST14DMO.003
Reflection Radiometer
National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA 30 m Improvement of SRTM and https://doi.org/10.5067/MEaSUREs/NASADEM/
DEM ASTER DEMs NASADEM_NC.001
The Advanced Land Observing Satellite ALOS 12.5 m 2006 – 2011 https://doi.org/10.5067/Z97HFCNKR6VA

Table 3
Soil physical parameters and calibration factors.
Soil type Sand (%) Silt (%) Clay (%) Ksat Air-entry suction α (m − 1) Pore size distribution β (-)
(m/d)

S1 General paddy soils 33 38 29 0.33 3.73 1.17

S2 Periodically waterlogged paddy soils 36 38 26 0.35 3.79 1.18
S3 Percogenic paddy soils 37 35 28 0.38 4.08 1.17
S4 Saline paddy soils 27 46 27 0.24 3.03 1.18
S5 Lateritic red soils 28 29 43 0.34 3.69 1.13
S6 Red earths 39 25 36 0.49 4.84 1.15
S7 Yellow-red earths 36 33 31 0.39 4.2 1.16
S8 Bleaching yellow earths 45 30 25 0.49 4.71 1.19
S9 Coastal aeolian soils 97 1 2 6.35 5.9 1.81
S10 Coastal solonchaks 28 29 43 0.34 3.69 1.13
S11 Fluvo-aquic soils 47 31 22 0.49 4.57 1.21
S12 Acid Sulphate Soils 6 45 49 0.14 1.95 1.12
Calibration factor – – – 4.11 0.10 9.82

can effectively explain the temporal dynamics of the unsaturated zone,
along with groundwater table dynamics and surface runoff.
Despite advances in modeling coastal flood responses to ground­
water table dynamics, it remains difficult to realistically predict flood
extent and magnitude across coastal watersheds (e.g., Anderson et al.,
2018), perhaps in large part because of the difficulty in realistically
assessing and representing the multi-scale flood generation processes
(Saksena et al., 2021; Blöschl, 2022). As such, the cross-section simu­
lations can hardly capture the interactions between rivers and coastal
aquifers (Yu et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2020; Merchán-Rivera et al.,
2021). In addition, simplification of recharge and near-surface energy
processes (Shi et al., 2013) could misrepresent the spatiotemporal
characteristics of surface runoff (Xiao et al., 2019). It is therefore
essential to quantify “where” and “how much” groundwater is actively
responsible for SLR and potentially conductive to coastal flooding.
Recently, several types of spatially-distributed hydrological models
have been used to capture the groundwater dynamics at different tem­
poral scales, which is critical to driving different flood processes (Con­
don et al., 2021; Lam et al., 2021; Habel et al., 2017; Saksena et al.,
2019). Conceptually, the groundwater table will rise in coastal areas due
to SLR (Fig. 1), especially in low-lying areas the water table is close to
the land surface. When heavy rainfall happens on less thick unsaturated
zone, short-term groundwater inundation may show up, and cause un­
preparedness for coastal hazards (Nicholls & Cazenave, 2010). The long-
term emergence of groundwater in inland areas could damage coastal
habitats, submerge fertile farmland, and present extensive damage to
coastal infrastructure and coastal community development (Bjerklie
et al., 2012; Rotzoll and Fletcher, 2013). Such long-lasting groundwater
inundation can also exacerbate overland flooding (Huntingford et al.,
2014) due to less infiltration during storm runoff. At a longer timescale,
groundwater storage may show divergent responses under a warming
climate (Condon et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2020). Khaki and Awange
(2021) used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data to
quantify the water storage increase of Lake Victoria, which was the
major reason for increased floods. Hora et al. (2019) showed changes in
groundwater could be misinterpreted by data from different sources,
including GRACE, observation well data, field reports, and farm surveys.
We know that the transient characteristics of coupled surface–subsur­
face processes drive the exchange of water across the ground surface.
Details of these interactions are important because they determine the
timing and magnitude of previously recharged groundwater drains into
the stream as subsurface runoff (Frey et al., 2021). For this reason, it is
necessary to include coupled surface–subsurface hydrologic processes to
simulate the impacts of SLR on coastal flooding. An improved

Table 4
Landcover parameters and calibration factors.
Land Cover Type Maximum Minimum Stomatal Reference Stomatal Albedo Vegetation Manning’s Roughness Root Zone
LAI Resistance Resistance (X106) Fraction Coefficient Depth

L1 Open water 0.00 0 0 0.14 0.00 4.34 0

L2 Developed High 500 0.0018 8.42 0.25 0.10 1.50 0.0
Intensity
L3 Barren Land 4.98 0 0 0.23 0.00 4.14 0.0
L4 Evergreen Forest 4.98 0.0018 8.44 0.24 0.83 6.71 0.6
L5 Shrub/Scrub 1.53 0.0012 6.54 0.15 0.38 3.13 0.6
L6 Grassland/ 4.30 0.0017 7.78 0.26 0.65 4.17 0.6
Herbaceous
L7 Cultivated Crops 2.87 0.0008 5.18 0.15 0.50 2.78 0.6
L8 Woody Wetlands 1.53 0.0020 1.19 0.24 0.40 4.75 0.6
Calibration factor 1.15 1 1 1 0.70 0.15 1.60

4
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 4. Comparison of modelled and observed discharge at Jiaokeng (a-d), (e) GRACE estimated groundwater storage anomalies.
understanding of subsurface hydrological processes and the link be­
tween overland flooding and groundwater tables caused by sea-level rise
is critical to developing coastal zone adaptation and water management
strategies.
Here, we set out coupled surface–subsurface models to determine the
effects of SLR on groundwater inundation and river floods. We integrate
high-resolution coupled surface water-groundwater flow models to un­
derstand coastal river exchanges with the surrounding aquifers. The
model setup is applied to three neighboring coastal watersheds with
contrasting geometries. We sought to understand the patterns and
timescales of exchange across riverbanks and coastlines, determined by
the coupled surface–subsurface processes. Specific objectives of the
present study are to (i) test a coupled surface–subsurface flow model
with both streamflow and GRACE data in a coastal area; (ii) assess
coastal groundwater inundation and river floods spatially and tempo­
rally; and (iii) show how SLR may influence groundwater inundation
and river floods under changing climate.
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Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Study area
The study area is located in the southeast of Guangdong Province,
China (Fig. 2), between 114◦ 57′ 47′′ E and 115◦ 46′ 48′′ E and 22◦ 42′ 21′′ N
and 23◦ 29′ 25′′ N, with an area of 3.5x103 km2. There are three water­
sheds from east to west: Luohe River (LH, 1556 km2), Huangjiang River
(HJ, 1517 km2), and Chishi River (CS, 437 km2). The study area is high
on the west-north and low on the east-south, and these rivers drain into
the South China Sea.
The study area belongs to the zone of the subtropics monsoon climate
with an unbalanced distribution of precipitation in season and region
(Wang et al., 2021). The annual precipitation is about 1910 mm with
>85 % in flood season (from April to September). The mean annual air
temperature is 21.9℃, 347 days frost-proof date, and 2179.1 annual
average sunshine hours. The mean annual potential evapotranspiration
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 5. Annual hydrometeorological data in two climate-changing regimes P1: 1992–2001 and P2: 2004–2013.
(PET) is 1351.5 mm⋅year− 1 (1956–2020). There are 8 land cover types in
these watersheds: evergreen forest (46.7 %), cultivated crops (32.0 %),
developed high intensity (6.4 %), open water (5.9 %), grassland/her­
baceous (5.1 %), shrub/scrub (3.2 %), barren land (0.6 %), and woody
wetland (0.2 %). The overlying sediments were formed during the
period of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. The main soil type is
red soil, granitic weathering mountain red soil with high sand was
distributed in the northwest upland-mountain zone, and lateritic red soil
in the quaternary formation was widely distributed in the central plain
area.
The main channel networks were quite different among these three
watersheds. The LH Watershed is a rectangular-shaped or elongated
basin with a branching river network. The HJ Watershed is a triangular-
shaped divergent basin with two main tributaries merging near the river
mouth. The CS Watershed is a heart- or pear-shaped convergent basin
with a straight river channel.
The study area covers 72 % land area of Shanwei City, and 11 % total
coastline of Guangdong Province, China. Since 2017, the ShenShan
6
Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
Special Cooperation Zone (SSSCZ), mainly covering the CS Watershed,
has become a new district of Shenzhen City to link the eastern Guang­
dong area with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (Li
et al., 2019). The lengths of coastline in each watershed are LH: 6.1 km,
HJ 225.4 km, and CS: 31.2 km. There is a tidal station Shanwei in HJ
(Fig. 2), with sea-level elevation observation since 1975.
2.2. Modeling approach
We used PIHM (Penn State Integrated Hydrological Model) to
simulate the coastal flooding processes (Fig. 3). PIHM is a physics-based,
coupled surface–subsurface, distributed hydrologic model. It simulates
hydrological processes including interception, throughfall, infiltration,
recharge, evapotranspiration, channel routing, overland flow, unsatu­
rated soil water, and groundwater flow by integrating the underlying
ordinary and partial differential equations (ODEs and PDEs) in a fully
coupled scheme (Qu & Duffy, 2007). In PIHM, the land surface is
decomposed as an unstructured triangular irregular network by using
X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Fig. 6. Total water storage anomaly (TWSA) in three watersheds (a) Luohe, (b) Huangjiang, and (c) Chishi. The variability is plotted in (d).

Table 5
Hydrological trends in two time periods: P1 (1992–2001) and P2 (2004–2013).
Time period Hydrologic variable Rainfall (m/year) Temperature Total Water Storage Streamflow Sea Level (cm)
(◦ C) (m) (109m3/year)

P1 Mean 1.99 22.68 3.49 2.2 135.8

(1992–2001) Slope 0.0591(*) − 0.0052 − 0.537 0.0789(*) 0.952(*)
P2 Mean 1.87 22.65 3.62 1.76 138.9
(2004–2013) Slope − 0.0188 0.0018 − 0.139 − 0.0152 1.098(*)

*indicates passed significant test (p < 0.05).

Delaunay triangulation, and river channels are represented as rectan­
gular elements. The model domain decomposition can be automatically
constrained by the heterogeneity of hydrologic features (e.g., soil maps,
and land cover) and boundary conditions, etc. The total evapotranspi­
ration includes evaporation from canopy interception, transpiration
from vegetation, and evaporation from the soil, which is calculated by
using the Penman-Monteith approach adapted from Noah_LSM (Chen &
Dudhia, 2001; Shi et al., 2013). Overland flow and channel flow de­
scriptions are handled by 2-D (overland flow) and 1-D (channel flow)
estimation of Saint-Venant equations (Qu and Duffy, 2007). Subsurface
flow in the model is conceptualized into unsaturated (only considering
vertical flow) and saturated layers (considering both vertical and lateral
flow), which are solved by Richard’s equation and Darcy’s equation,
respectively (Qu and Duffy, 2007). All hydrological processes within the
prismatic control volume are represented in a system of ODEs by using
the semi-discrete finite volume method for solving the system of coupled
PDEs (Table 1). Detailed descriptions of the hydrological components
and formulations of the model are referred to the PIHM website (https:
//www.pihm.psu.edu/) and associated publications (Qu & Duffy, 2007;
Kumar, 2009).
2.3. Model setup
We collected geospatial data to set up PIHM model at three water­
sheds, including DEM, meteorological forcing, soil and land cover data
(Fig. 2). The DEM data were obtained from different sources (Table 2).
The meteorological data are from China Meteorological Administration
with a temporal resolution of one hour, including precipitation, tem­
perature, solar radiation, wind speed, and relative humidity. The soil
type dataset is provided by the Data Center for Resources and Envi­
ronmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (RESDC)
(http://www.resdc.cn). The hydraulic conductivity and the Van

7
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 7. Annual average FDC under 0 m, 0.5 m, and 1 m sea-level rise for (a) Luohe River, (b) Huangjiang River, and (c) Chishi River.
Genuchten water retention parameters, α and β, were estimated by using
the empirical Pedotransfer function (Wösten et al., 1999). The land
cover data were obtained from Gong et al. (2019) at http://data.ess.
tsinghua.edu.cn.
We parameterized the model domain by using PIHMgis to process the
physical properties from datasets such as DEM, soil attributes, and land
cover data, etc. The domain was spatially decomposed into 12,206 un­
structured triangular elements and 231 stream segments (Fig. 3). The
elements near the coastline were set as an open boundary condition and
a fixed head boundary equal to sea level (Zhang et al., 2018). The mesh
size of land elements varied from 156 to 1389 m2. The initial ground­
water tables were set as 3 m below the land surface and no initial surface
water for the entire modeling domain. The open boundary is linked to
sea level variation, the sea level was set as constant head and the
baseline was set as 0 m. We conducted the model simulation by using the
meteorological forcing from 1991 to 2013.
We collected GRACE data in the study area to validate the variation
of water storage. Total water storage (TWS) change as one important
water availability indicator is inferred by the mass change detected by
GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites. We ob­
tained the monthly TWS anomaly (TWSA) data from the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) and the Center for Space Research (CSR) that are based
on the mascons solution (release 6) at a resolution of 0.5◦ . These JPL and
CSR RL06 products incorporate corrections to minimize errors,
including the C20 coefficients corrections from satellite laser ranging
8
Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
(Loomis et al., 2019), the degree 1 coefficients (GeoCenter) corrections,
the glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) corrections (Peltier et al., 2018;
Swenson and Wahr, 2006). In addition, JPL RL06 products also provide
gridded scaling factors generated by the CLM (Community Land Model)
land surface model to be multiplied to the mascon fields that have the
color rendering index (CRI) filter applied to calculate the final TWSA
values (Landerer et al., 2020; Wiese et al., 2016). Our study areas
covered 4 grids of GRACE data. We used area-weighted average to
represent observed total water anomalies of each watershed since the
three watersheds contain different grids of GRACE data (Figure S1). The
observed total water storage was used to validate modeled results.
2.4. Calibration and validation
The model simulation was carried out for 24 years (1991–2013). We
used the first year (1991) as the warmup period. Our model was cali­
brated for 2001 and validated for three years (1996, 2002, and 2008) by
comparing the simulated daily stream flow with the observation. The
streamflow data from Jiaokeng was used for model calibration (Fig. 2b).
The key model parameters are soil porosity, soil hydraulic conductivity,
river bank conductivity, preferential flow, and Manning’s roughness
coefficient (Table 3, Table 4). These parameters were calibrated into two
groups separately according to the hydrologic characteristics: runoff and
evapotranspiration groups, to improve the efficiency of computational-
intensive surface water-subsurface water couple model simulations (Yu
X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Fig. 8. Increase of river water level in the scenario of a) 0.5 m SLR and b) 1.0 m SLR. Darker color indicates greater water level increase.

et al., 2013). Rainfall-runoff processes from Jul 1, 2001, to Jul 15, 2001, satisfactorily reproduced daily streamflow in the Jiaokeng hydrological
were selected for runoff parameters calibration, and parameters were station. In addition, modeled total water storage anomaly was able to
optimized by using the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strat­ reproduce the seasonal and annual variability of groundwater indicated
egy (CMS-ES, Hansen, 2006). Evapotranspiration parameters were by GRACE data (Fig. 4).
tuned by matching the seasonal groundwater variability in 2001.
Our model results were validated by both runoff and groundwater
2.5. Future SLR scenarios
storage dynamics. Four statistical indices were used to assess the model
performances, including the coefficient of correlation (R), the relative
We used two SLR scenarios to previously calibrated models to
error (RE), the Nash-Sutcliff efficiency coefficient (NSE), and the Kling-
explore the impacts of SLR on groundwater inundation, marine inun­
Gupta efficiency (KGE, Gupta et al., 2009). Streamflow calibration and
dation, and river floods. Studies suggested that the South China Sea is a
validation results are shown in Fig. 4 and Table S1, the model
hotspot of SLR (He et al., 2014b; Jackson and Jevrejeva, 2016; Feng

9
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 9. Groundwater table responses to SLR. (a) Increase of mean groundwater table in P1:1992–2001 under SLR of 0.5 m. (b) Increase of mean groundwater table in
P1:1993–2002 under SLR of 1.0 m. (c) Increase of mean groundwater table in P2:2004–2013 under SLR of 0.5 m. (d) Increase of mean groundwater table in
P2:2004–2013 under SLR of 1.0 m.
et al., 2021) and the increase of sea level from 2010 to 2100 can reach as
high as 1 m (Qu et al., 2019). Here we applied 0.5 m and 1.0 m as the
seaside boundary to conduct a controlled numerical experiment with
other climate forcing unchanged, which can isolate the impact of
climate change (Lai et al., 2020) on rainfall, temperature, and other
climate variables. By explicitly simulating groundwater dynamics in a
series of pseudo SLR experiments, we seek to directly evaluate the
impact of SLR on coastal flooding processes. Our method using PIHM
can explicitly simulate lateral groundwater flow and groundwater-
surface water interactions, with complete physical processes of SLR-
driven flooding.
3. Result
3.1. Trends in rainfall and water storage
Trends in annual rainfall were analyzed at the 10-year scale to detect
decadal climate change. We separated our simulation into two periods:
1992–2001 (P1) and 2004–2013 (P2). Such separation was determined
by the Mann-Kendall test, where changing points of annual rainfall was
found around the year 2003 in all the three watersheds (Figure S2).
From the linear regression, we could see the trends in temperature,
rainfall (Fig. 5; Table 5). In P1, both rainfall and streamflow showed
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Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
significant trends of increase. In P2, all the hydrological variables
demonstrated no significant trends, including rainfall, temperature, and
streamflow.
Total water storage did not change significantly in both P1 and P2.
From the linear regression, we could see the slight decreasing trends in
water storage without passing the significant test in both P1 and P2
(Fig. 6, Table 5). The observed sea level data at Shanwei Tidal Station
showed slightly increasing trends in both P1 and P2 (Fig. 6, Table 5).
3.2. Responses of river floods
River floods at the outlet were impacted by SLR similarly in both P1
and P2. Fig. 7 shows the flow duration curve (FDC) of daily streamflow
in the three watersheds. There was a difference in FDC between these
watersheds as they have different characteristics (e.g. shape, length of
coastlines, river networks, and topography). The low flow increased
with the sea-level rise, while high flow did not show marked difference.
LH Watershed had a smaller increase in low flow because of short
coastline. HJ and CS Watersheds showed high increase of low flow, there
was over 30 % increase in 90 % frequency of streamflow in these two
rivers under the 0.5 m SLR scenario, and the increase of 90 % frequency
reached by 70 % under the 1 m SLR scenario.
The increasing impacts of streamflow reached upstream in different
X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Fig. 10. Groundwater table response to climate change in different geospatial groups. (a) Decrease of groundwater table from P1 to P2 due to a smaller amount of
rainfall. (b) Increase of groundwater table in P2 due to SLR of 0.5 m. (c) increase of groundwater table in P2 due to SLR of 1.0 m. The left, middle, and right columns
are the geospatial groups: distance to the coastline (D1: <50 m; D2: 50 ~ 100 m; D3: 100 ~ 500 m; D4: 500 ~ 1000 m; D5: 1000 ~ 5000 m; D6: 5000 ~ 10000 m; D7:
>10000 m), soil class (See Table 3), and landcover (See Table 4).

extend in the three watersheds. In the CS Watershed, SLR showed
limited impacts on the river water tables (Fig. 8). In the HJ Watershed,
the scenario of 0.5 m SLR resulted increase of the river table of 0.08 m. In
the scenario of 1.0 m SLR the river table was increased by 0.11 m. The
hotspot of the river water table rise was in the east branch (Fig. 8). In the
LH Watershed, the scenario of 0.5 m SLR resulted increase of the river
table of 0.12 m. In the scenario of 1.0 m SLR the river table was
increased by 0.15 m. The hotspot of the river water table rise was in the
west branch (Fig. 8).
3.3. Responses of groundwater inundation
Rising sea levels resulted in higher groundwater table in limited
hotspots along the coastline (Figs. 9 and 10). The responses in P1 were
more significant than P2. In P1, SLR of 0.5 m increased groundwater
table at 6.22 % of the whole study area, and SLR of 1.0 m increased
groundwater table at 6.53 %. In P2, SLR of 0.5 m and 1.0 m resulted in
higher groundwater table at 4.34 % and 4.98 % respectively. The
location of lower water tables was found most in the soil type: lateritic
red earths. In the landcover groups, an increase of water table could be
found large in wetland and barren land (Fig. 10).
Decrease of annual rainfall resulted in lower groundwater table
across the watersheds (Fig. 11). From P1 to P2, the annual rainfall
decreased by 120 mm. The corresponding groundwater table dropped
slightly (i.e. < 0.05 m) in many places of these watersheds. Severe drop
(i.e. > 0.40 m) of groundwater table was only found locally.
The modeling results of PIHM showed temporal dynamic of
groundwater inundation. In the historic simulation, groundwater inun­
dation only showed up on July 23, 2008 (Fig. 12). In the 1 m SLR sce­
narios, groundwater inundation lasted from July 23 to July 30, 2008,
due to the higher groundwater table. Consequently, river floods lasted
longer, though peak flow was not changed.

11
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 11. The groundwater table was reduced due to decreased rainfall from P1 to P2.
3.4. Responses of marine inundation
The GIS analysis results showed that spatial distribution of marine
inundation strongly depends on the quality and resolution of the DEM.
In 1 m SLR scenario, the inundation areas were 72.0, 66.2, 129.7, and
47.2 km2 according to SRTM, ASTER, NASA, and ALOS DEMs, respec­
tively (Fig. 13). All of the results indicated that marine inundation will
happen around the river mouth of HJ and LH, though the spatial pat­
terns were not consistent. Inundation map based on SRTM DEM showed
similar pattern to the NASA DEM results. ASTER DEM received less
inundation around mouth of the HJ River and more inundation around
mouth of the LH River. ALOS DEM only received inundation around
mouth of the HJ River, leading to the smallest inundation area.
4. Discussion
4.1. Characterization of near-surface hydrological dynamics
Rising sea-level has been considered as an important contributing
factor of greater coastal flooding (Hauer et al., 2021; Kulp & Strauss,
2019). Increasing studies suggested subsurface hydrological processes
can also be important in coastal flooding (Befus et al., 2020; Lam et al.,
2021). Our results suggested that SLR increased flooding duration and
locations via groundwater inundation. Such near-surface hydrological
dynamics can hardly be identified by DEM only. Therefore, existing
flood-prone maps should be reassessed not only along the low-lying area
connected to the coastlines but also consider temporal inundation fre­
quency where groundwater inundation may happen.
The rising groundwater level, which inevitably brings about the
increased groundwater reserves and decreased storage space of unsat­
urated zone, changes the process of surface runoff. Based on the study of
FDC, it is found that when the sea level rises, there is a marked increase
of low flow while there is no significant change of high flow and that
when the streamflow is split into base flow and quick flow, base flow is
on the rise while quick flow does not demonstrate obvious changes. The
increase of base flow results from the rise of groundwater level with
which the groundwater flows into the river, while quick flow is formed
12
Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
by surface runoff. One of the large differences between coastal and
inland areas is that in coastal zones, there is a long coastline by which
water can run through the surface and underground into the ocean
instead of flowing into the river before discharging into the sea. Ac­
cording to this research, base flow which runs into the sea by the
coastline shows an annual growing trend as the sea level rises and in­
creases in the flood season. It is proved that when it rains, some of the
coastal surface flow is discharged into the streamflow by the slope while
others flow directly into the ocean by the coastline. While in the process
of SLR, it is mainly coastal areas that are affected. Therefore, when there
is a flood, SLR does not exert a significant influence on the quick flow of
coastal zones.
Our model simulation could capture temporal dynamics of marine
inundation, though the spatial resolution was poor. Higher resolution of
the DEM can be used to mapping flood vulnerability (Karamouz &
Fereshtehpour, 2019; Kelleher and McPhillips, 2020). It has been found
that different sources of DEM can result in uncertainties of coastal flood
risk assessment up to triple at the global scale and to 98 % at the regional
scale (Kulp & Strauss, 2019). Since coastal geomorphology is one of the
most dynamically changing due to both natural sediments and human
activities. Therefore, timely high-resolution elevation data is required
for flood control against marine inundation. Our study area will witness
fast economic growth due to the development of SSSCZ (Li et al., 2019),
hence the resulting land use change will affect the flooding processes.
Robust flood vulnerability should integrate both topography, land use
and hydrological processes (Zhang et al. 2022; Condon and Maxwell,
2019; Hu et al., 2021).
4.2. Implications for coastal flood mitigation
Our simulation indicated that current resolution of GRACE total
water storage can hardly be directly used in coastal groundwater inun­
dation. Downscaled anomaly is required to understand coastal ground­
water inundation along the globe. Groundwater monitoring wells should
be distributed across these watersheds, with more attention to lateritic
red earths, wetland, and barren land in our study area. Similar modeling
approach can be developed in other coastal areas for the identification
X. Yu et al.
Fig. 12. PIHM modeled inundation during a flood event in 2008. a) spatial groundwater in historic simulation; b) spatial groundwater in the simulation of 1 m SLR;
c) Runoff responses of the flood event; d) Temporal groundwater dynamics in the flood event.
on areas susceptible to groundwater inundation.
Our modeled groundwater table response suggested most vulnerable
location of groundwater inundation. The rise of the groundwater level
was found to be related to the landform, soil properties and land use.
Based on the analysis of the spatial variation of the rising groundwater
level, the influencing factors can be discovered, which is especially
important to city planning and land development and utilization. It is
necessary to avoid locating significant land in zones where the
groundwater table rises rapidly so as to avoid enlarged losses when
developing and using the land. Meanwhile, people can provide a better
management of coastal communities that have been developed and set
up to guarantee the life and property safety of the residents. Because of
the lack of the knowledge about groundwater, a few methods can be
applied to deal with groundwater emergence and shoaling. With the
rising of the sea level, the emergence and shoaling of groundwater as
well as the widening of these areas, it can be learned from this study that
people should attach more importance to and increase research on the
dynamic change of groundwater under the condition of climate change.
4.3. Limitations and future research
A limitation of the study here is that the role of groundwater in
propagation of sea-level rise impacts was not explicitly evaluated. When
digging into the spatial variation of rising groundwater (e.g. Saksena
et al., 2019; 2021), this study does not conduct a detailed analysis of a
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Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554
certain impact because our model application was based on real
topography elements, combines the composite influences of landform,
soil and land use. Hence, the hydrogeological elements can be split and
quantitatively studied in the simulation to gain the quantitative impact
of various factors on the groundwater process. In addition, there are
other factors influencing the river flood, such as the rainfall intensity
(Dykstra & Dzwonkowski, 2021), tides (Araújo et al., 2021), surges
(Feng et al., 2021), land use (Adnan et al., 2020). Therefore, our current
modeling results may underestimate the flooding extent. Future
research should incorporate real tidal data and future rainfall pre­
dictions due to the slowdown of tropical cyclones (Lai et al., 2020).
5. Conclusion
With the recent development of fully coupled surface–subsurface
hydrologic models, and their application to large watersheds, the
different factors contributing to coastal flooding became highly rele­
vant. This study describes a coupled surface–subsurface modeling
approach that was applied in understanding coastal flooding processes
under scenarios of changes in rainfall and sea levels. Thus, GRACE data
and runoff observation were modeled using the PIHM simulations. The
modelled flooding responses of these coastal catchments showed strong
interactions of river floods, groundwater inundation and marine
inundation.
Our results obtained indicate that surface water-groundwater
X. Yu et al. Journal of Hydrology 614 (2022) 128554

Fig. 13. Permanent marine inundation through GIS analysis.

interaction cross watersheds and coastlines controls the spatial and exposure. Such information is urgently needed to identify and advise
temporal dynamics of water table, which drives coastal flooding pro­ appropriate management decisions that reduce flooding in severely
cesses. This approach uses widely available GIS and hydrologic data. impacted regions that already have dense population and high economic
Thus, our model parameters can be obtained easily for any new location growth.
and calibrated with runoff and total water storage data. We anticipate
that our modeling approach can be reasonably applied to similar coastal
watersheds worldwide to evaluate the public risks of coastal flood

14
X. Yu et al.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xuan Yu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Writing –
review & editing. Lu Luo: Conceptualization, Software, Validation,
Writing – review & editing. Peng Hu: Funding acquisition, Project
administration, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Xinjun Tu:
Data curation, Writing – review & editing. Xiaohong Chen: Data
curation, Writing – review & editing. Junhong Wei: Data curation,
Investigation, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the National Key Research and Devel­
opment Program of China (2021YFC3001000), the Open Research Fund
of State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in
River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower
Research, Grant no. IWHR-SKL-201902, the Guangdong Provincial
Department of Science and Technology (2019ZT08G090), the Water
Science and Technology Innovation Project of Guangdong Province
(2020-27), the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change
and Natural Disaster Studies (2020B1212060025), the Innovation
Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong
Laboratory (Zhuhai) (Grant 311021001), and the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities, Sun Yat-sen University
(2021qntd15). We would like to thank the reviewers of this manuscript
for their constructive comments.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128554.
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