Salman Sharifazari

Research Topic:

Climate change impacts on water resources for Indian Ocean Island Communities

Supervised by:

• Martin Andersen
• Fiona Johnson
• Jonathan Palmer
• Chris Turney

Description:

Small oceanic islands are among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change. Most of these islands rely on their limited groundwater sources, which emerge as freshwater lenses on top of the saline seawater. Alongside the rise in sea level, extended periods of drought are the major contributors to the depletion of these valuable sources. However, the limited available hydroclimate data on these islands hinders our understanding of the range of their natural climate variability and how climate change has affected them. Paleoclimate proxies, especially annually resolved tree rings, are valuable evidence of past climate variability and can be used to reconstruct hydroclimate variables such as rainfall, streamflow, etc., for the last few centuries. Applying the reconstructed series of rainfall recharge derived from these records to a calibrated 3D density-dependent groundwater model for the oceanic island provides insights into the groundwater lens fluctuations under different ranges of climate variability. This broadens the possible scenarios in helping with the risk assessment analyses for water resource management on these islands.

Bio:

Salman received his master’s in water resource engineering from the University of Tehran (UoT, Iran) in 2012. He then worked as a lecturer in the water engineering department at the University of Zabol (UoZ, Iran) for five years. After that, he moved to the water industry, completing projects across a range of disciplines, including hydrology, irrigation networks, and water infrastructure. His PhD journey commenced in October 2020, for which he has been awarded the Scientia Scholarship.