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Projected water table depths along the North and South Carolina coasts

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Catalog Last Checked: May 05, 2026 at 08:19 PM | Dataset Last Updated: May 16, 2023 at 12:00 AM
To predict water table depths, seamless groundwater heads for unconfined coastal North and South Carolina groundwater systems were modeled with homogeneous, steady-state MODFLOW simulations. The geographic extent examined was limited primarily to low-elevation (land surface less than approximately 10 m above mean sea level) areas. Steady-state MODFLOW groundwater flow models were used to obtain detailed (50-meter-scale) predictions over large geographic scales (100s of kilometers) of groundwater heads for both current and future sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios (0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and 3 m) using 3 spatially varying hydraulic conductivities (K); one based on published K’s, one with published K’s reduced by a factor of 10 (K*0.1), and one with published K’s increased by a factor of 10 (K*10) to assess the sensitivity of model results to K. All models had variable thicknesses corresponding to published transmissivities. The models were run with a local mean higher-high water (MHHW) marine boundary condition, and with groundwater reaching the land surface removed from the model, simulating loss via natural drainage. Modeled groundwater heads were then subtracted from high-resolution topographic digital elevation model (DEM) data to obtain the water table depths.

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