“…Sandbox laboratory setups have been extensively utilized to study the fundamental mechanisms of saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers (Abdoulhalik et al, 2017; Armanuos et al, 2019; Goswami & Clement, 2007; Konz et al, 2008; Kuan et al, 2012; Liu et al, 2017; Robinson et al, 2016; Stoeckl & Houben, 2012; Takahashi et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2002). The majority of laboratory studies have recreated SWI in homogeneous synthetic aquifers (Abdelgawad et al, 2018; Abdoulhalik & Ahmed, 2018a, 2018b; Q. Chang et al, 2019; Guo et al, 2019; Kuan et al, 2019; Lee et al, 2019; Levanon et al, 2019; Memari et al, 2020; Na et al, 2019; Noorabadi et al, 2017; Shen et al, 2020; Stoeckl et al, 2019; Yu et al, 2019).…”