SAEON St Lucia site - South Africa

Surface water ground water driven system
While the secondary porosity aquifers provide the largest volume of river runoff to the lake, it has been established from analyses of historical data that the ecological resilience of the lake is critically dependent on the primary porosity aquifers that provide perennial seepage flows that sustain micro-habitats along the lake shoreline (Taylor, et. al., 2006). In the primary aquifer, the synergy between the groundwater system and coastal lakes is a feature that is common along the east coast of Africa. These coastal lakes and surrounding wetlands are systems where the groundwater fluxes continually move through their shorelines to create groundwater-dependent ecosystems. The low lying topography in the coastal plains means that the groundwater is generally close to the topographical surface, creating a shallow phreatic zone that strongly influences the terrestrial ecology.