Groundwater systems are slow to adapt to the reconfiguration of the hydrological conditions at Earth’s surface7–9, and therefore remnants of meteoric groundwater are likely to be found offshore. Now that it is becoming clear that anthropogenic and natural changes in continental water storage affect global sea level10,11, and that the sequestration of fresh water below continental shelves contributed to the increase of ocean salinity during glacial periods12, an appraisal of offshore groundwater as an element in global environmental change is warranted. Moreover, because continental shelf aquifers underlie areas that are in a continuous state of transition in response to global climate and sea level, offshore groundwater could hold important clues to the natural variability of the hydrological cycle over thousands of years, or even longer.In this Review, we discuss overwhelming evidence that vast meteoric groundwater reserves (VMGRs) below the sea floor are a common global phenomenon and review the recent advances in our understanding of the key mechanisms that favour the emplacement, as well as the preservation, of VMGRs. The salinity within VMGRs can range between that of fresh water and that of sea water, and their delineation requires a practical defi- nition. VMGRs are defined in this Review as a groundwater body with a minimum horizontal extent of 10 km, and a minimum concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) less than 10 gl−1, which is about one-third of the salinity of sea water.The selection of this salinity threshold is deliberate — it coincides with the upper limit of the salinity range used for the definition of brackish water in the area of water desalination13. Brackish water is increasingly seen as a resource for water supply14,15 because the energy needs of reverse osmosis16, and therefore costs of desalination, are decreasing. The widespread confirmation of the scale of offshore fresh and brackish groundwater reserves therefore provides opportunities for the relief of water scarcity in densely populated coastal regions. Offshore groundwater abstraction can help to mitigate the adverse effects of onshore pump- ing, such as land subsidence17,18 and seawater intrusion19,20. This provides another important impetus to shift the boundaries of hydrogeology into the offshore domain.
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