No abstract

The projected growth of Hernando County, located along the coast of west‐central Florida, has motivated the county and the Southwest Florida Water Management District to assess ground water resources in the area. As part of the Hernando County Water Resources Assessment Project, a computationally efficient modeling approach was developed to simulate regional ground water flow and salt water intrusion in two adjoining ground water basins in which Hernando County is located. In this modeling approach, the regional ground water flow simulation was divided into two stages: fresh water and sharp‐interface simulations. The first stage was performed using a calibrated fresh water model. Following the fresh water simulation, a calibrated sharp‐interface model was used to evaluate the potential extent of migration of the fresh water/salt water interface as a result of implementing ground water management scenarios. Predictive modeling results indicate that projected future ground water withdrawals will cause less than 0.6 m of additional drawdown within Hernando County. Results also suggest that by the year 2050 the fresh water/salt water interface will migrate landward less than 1.6 km from its 1994 position.