Global Investigations of Seawater Intrusion (SWI) in Coastal Groundwaters in the Last Two Decades (2000–2020): A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Seawater intrusion represents the flow of seawater through coastal aquifers, but it also affects surface water bodies such as channels, canals, and wetlands. Transitional water volumes, variable density and salinity distributions, and heterogeneous hydraulic properties describe coastal aquifers which are present in complex environments. The relationships between water density and salinity, climatic variations, groundwater pumps, and sea level fluctuations provide complex hydrological conditions related to the distribution of dissolved salts. This review will focus on (i) systematic evaluation of global SWI areas assessed by different methodologies and author contributions, (ii) SWI identified areas across the world using publication results, and (iii) bibliometric analysis of SWI publications for evaluation of the current status in coastal zone management, including the research gaps that are published in the Journal of Hydrology (5.91%), Environmental Geology (3.41%), Hydrogeology Journal (3.20%), Science of the Total Environment (1.60%), Water Resources Research (1.50%), Arabian Journal of Geosciences (1.30%), Environmental Earth Sciences (1.20%), Advances in Water Resources (1.10%), Applied Geochemistry (1.10%), Water Resources Management (1.0%), and Hydrological Processes (0.8%), a collection representing 30.59% (94 articles) of the total peer-reviewed scientific products of the past two decades focusing on the use of the present status of SWI in coastal aquifers, estuaries, and lagoons.