Abstract

NERI FLORES, Iris; ESCOLERO FUENTES, Oscar A.; PEREZ TORRES, Sara  and  RIQUER TRUJILLO, Guadalupe. Flooding due to groundwater in coastal areas: Study case: the Veracruz aquifer. Bol. Soc. Geol. Mex [online]. 2014, vol.66, n.2, pp.247-261. ISSN 1405-3322.

Flood risk management must be understood as an integral part of the hydrological cycle, where the rise of groundwater levels can produce groundwater flooding due to subterranean water. The methodology applied to identify this phenomena in a coastal flooding area in Veracruz was monthly monitoring, during 2012, of water table depth by installing a network of 27 shallow groundwater wells, piezometers and daily measurements of precipitation. The results show that there is a temporal variation of the water table, where the lowest level season was in May and rose as much as to 2 ‒ 3 m during September. In the study area, groundwater rise was evident in three cases of groundwater flooding that lasted for periods of up to four months. This work shows evidence of the existence of flooding areas due to subterranean water, which has to be taken into consideration in flood risk management in areas with shallow groundwater levels in coastal zones.

Keywords : flooding; groundwater; phreatic level; coastal zone; Veracruz.