https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. What do Venice, Jakarta, Manilla and Bangkok have in common? They are or were sinking cities. Wageningen researcher Philip Minderhoud studies the causes of subsidence in these cities. Groundwater extraction plays an important part in all cases. The good news is that this can be avoided. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-city.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:26:04 EDT news646586761 Land subsidence is overlooked as a hazard in cities, according to scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Virginia Tech. Writing in the journal Science, Prof Robert Nicholls of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at UEA and Prof Manoochehr Shirzaei of Virginia Tech and United Nations University for Water, Environment and Health, Ontario, highlight the importance of a new research paper analyzing satellite data that accurately and consistently maps land movement across China. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-china-urban-population-city-satellite.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:00:01 EDT news632651831 Sea level rise could hit major US cities like New Orleans and San Francisco harder than expected by mid-century because coastal land is sinking, researchers said Wednesday, warning current flood defenses leave people and property at risk. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-cities-exposed-seas.html Environment Sat, 09 Mar 2024 14:40:02 EST news628958136 I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Rodents eating herbal remedies. I watched a truck mistaken for an alien message. All those moments will be lost in time, like the Upper West Side under land subsidence. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-saturday-citations-rumbly-guts-alien.html Other Sat, 09 Mar 2024 08:50:01 EST news629124193 Land subsidence is a geohazard caused by the sudden or gradual settling (years to decades) of the land surface due to the removal of subsurface material. This can be due to a variety of factors, both natural (such as earthquakes, volcanic activity and compaction of fine-grained unconsolidated sediments) and anthropogenic (for example, mining and groundwater abstraction). It poses a major issue in urban zones where it can cause building collapse and damage to infrastructure that may be a hazard to life and a resource management problem. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-billion-people-globally-subsidence.html Earth Sciences Thu, 07 Mar 2024 10:59:42 EST news629031576 One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to Virginia Tech-led research. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-thousands-coastal-residents.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:00:01 EST news628942548 Sea level rise has already put coastal cities on notice thanks to increasing storm surges and even sunny day flooding at high tide. These challenges will continue to grow because global projections point to a mean sea level rise of at least one foot above year-2000 levels by the end of this century. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-york-jakarta-coastal-cities-faster.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:20:06 EST news625407604 Major cities on the U.S. Atlantic coast are sinking, in some cases as much as 5 millimeters per year—a decline at the ocean's edge that well outpaces global sea level rise, confirms new research from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-nyc-dc-cities-east-coast.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:17:03 EST news623431021 Perilously situated between rising sea levels and pressures from upstream lie coastal river deltas and their roughly half a billion inhabitants. These regions have played an important role in societal development since the last ice age, offering flat, fertile lands with abundant freshwater which are ideal for agriculture. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-river-deltas-threatened-climate-changeleaving.html Environment Wed, 13 Dec 2023 12:00:01 EST news621689146 Worldwide, coastal river deltas are home to more than half a billion people, supporting fisheries, agriculture, cities, and fertile ecosystems. In a unique study covering 49 deltas globally, researchers from Lund University and Utrecht University have identified the most critical risks to deltas in the future. The research shows that deltas face multiple risks, and that population growth and poor environmental governance might pose bigger threats than climate change to the sustainability of Asian and African deltas, in particular. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-coastal-river-deltas-threatened-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 20 Nov 2023 10:31:04 EST news619698661 Global water resources are stretched by climate change and human population growth, and farms and cities are increasingly turning to groundwater to fill their needs. Unfortunately, the pumping of groundwater can cause the ground surface above to sink, as the aquifers below are drained and the architecture of the ground collapses. For the first time, a new study maps this loss of groundwater storage capacity around the world. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-scientists-loss-groundwater-storage-world.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 06 Nov 2023 09:35:49 EST news618485746 The massive 2015 flooding of the Sagavanirktok River in northern Alaska had immediate impacts, including closure of the Dalton Highway for several days, but it also contributed to longer-term ground subsidence in the permafrost-rich region. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-alaska-dalton-highway-widespread-ground.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 12 Oct 2023 06:15:08 EDT news616310077 Along the Asian coastlines there are many areas where rural communities experience alarming rates of sea level rises due to land subsidence up to 10 cm per year. This causes tremendous challenges on how to live there and protect these coasts. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientists-potential-sustainable-rapidly-subsiding.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 03 Oct 2023 10:21:56 EDT news615547312 If New York is the city that never sleeps then how's this for keeping you up at night? It is also sinking. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-york-weight.html Earth Sciences Environment Sat, 03 Jun 2023 09:30:02 EDT news604769375 A trio of oceanologists at the University of Rhode Island working with a geologist colleague from USGS Moffett Field has found that the massive weight of buildings in New York City is contributing to its subsidence drop. In their study, reported in the journal Earth's Future, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng Wei, Steven D'Hondt and Tom Parsons calculated the total mass of the buildings that make up New York City and applied it to models that predict natural subsidence to estimate how much overall subsidence is likely to occur in the coming years. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-york-city-weight-contributing-subsidence.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 17 May 2023 09:28:08 EDT news603534484 Our cities have altered their original landscapes so greatly that their natural systems are profoundly compromised. These systems—such as swamps, rivers, creeks, aquifers and bushland corridors—need more space to function properly. Sometimes they assert their underlying presence through land subsidence, floods and fires. As Margaret Cook wrote in her history of Brisbane floods, the Brisbane River is "a river with a city problem". https://phys.org/news/2023-02-urban-gave-natural-space-recover.html Ecology Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:13:04 EST news596293982 Land subsidence is a phenomenon wherein the Earth's surface sinks downwards. It occurs mainly due to human activities, such as excessive groundwater extraction. It is a major global concern, affecting 19% of the world's population. In Japan, some parts of the Tokyo metropolitan region are already sinking. This process can accelerate the flooding of coastal areas and cause damage to buildings and infrastructure. Therefore, monitoring land subsidence is crucial. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-subsidence-japan-consecutive-dinsar-law.html Earth Sciences Tue, 21 Feb 2023 16:24:03 EST news596219041 Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists set out to address one of the biggest uncertainties about how carbon-rich permafrost will respond to gradual sinking of the land surface as temperatures rise. Using a high-performance computer simulation, the research team found that soil subsidence is unlikely to cause rampant thawing in the future. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-tundra-surface-trigger-runaway-permafrost.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 15 Feb 2023 10:09:04 EST news595678139 Researchers have pioneered the use of a tool that can track the loss of groundwater in California's Central Valley by measuring how much the Earth is sinking. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-satellites-track-groundwater-depletion-california.html Environment Wed, 04 Jan 2023 12:43:11 EST news592058587 An analysis of thousands of water and oil wells in the Houston metro area has uncovered significant rates of subsidence, or gradual sinking of the ground, in some of the region's fast-growing suburbs that have not been previously reported. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-significant-ground-houston-suburbs.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Oct 2022 14:15:03 EDT news584716501 A team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University, working with a group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and another colleague at ETH Zürich, has found evidence showing that parts of many big coastal cities are sinking faster than the sea is rising. In their paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the group describes using satellite-based radar to measure the degree of land subsidence for 48 of the largest cities in the world. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-coastal-cities-faster-sea.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 20 Sep 2022 11:00:06 EDT news582888715 The floor of California's arid Central Valley is sinking as groundwater pumping for agriculture and drinking water depletes aquifers. A new remote sensing study from Stanford University shows land sinking—or subsidence—will likely continue for decades to centuries if underground water levels merely stop declining. To stop the sinking, water levels will need to rise. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-groundwater-depletion-california-farmland-countermeasures.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 02 Jun 2022 15:52:48 EDT news573403963 Manila and several other coastal Asian cities are sinking faster than the rate of sea level rise, says a study that calls for strict regulatory measure to reduce groundwater extraction, identified as a major cause for land subsidence. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-asia-coastal-cities-faster-sea.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:27:37 EDT news570184054 Researchers have untangled puzzling patterns of sinking and rising land to pin down the underground locations where water is being pumped for irrigation. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nasa-underground-loss.html Environment Tue, 05 Apr 2022 14:57:47 EDT news568389463 Using satellite data, researchers have found that around 100 sq km in and around Delhi has high risk of land subsidence. Groundwater extraction is causing parts of the city to sink, with the largest area experiencing subsidence just 800m away from Delhi international airport. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hidden-subsidence-crisis-india-capital.html Environment Thu, 24 Mar 2022 09:36:43 EDT news567333399 New research shows that with special radar satellite technology, it's possible to detect warning signs and pinpoint exact locations where sinkhole activity is happening. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-radar-satellites-sinkholes.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 24 Jan 2022 11:12:06 EST news562245116 In Vietnam's Mekong Delta, home to about 17 million people, large areas of land have been poldered for the cultivation of crops such as rice and shrimp. At the moment, the delta is on average less than a meter above sea level. But due to accelerated land subsidence, mainly caused by groundwater extraction, a shortage of river sediment, and rising sea levels, researchers from Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University predict that by 2050 large parts of the delta will have fallen below sea level if nothing changes soon. What can Vietnam do to stay above water? https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mekong-delta-vietnam-sediment.html Earth Sciences Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:48:14 EST news561314890 Coastal erosion and land subsidence driven by permafrost thawing may lead to extensive seawater inundation in several northern Alaska communities by 2100, according to research by a University of Alaska Fairbanks geomorphologist. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-scientist-alaska-arctic-coastal-towns.html Environment Tue, 21 Dec 2021 15:20:02 EST news559322399 Two new studies led by former Tulane University doctoral students show the likely benefits of land building by river diversions, despite these deposits initially causing rapid subsidence in coastal Louisiana. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-river-diversions-louisiana-rapid.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 19 Nov 2021 09:28:14 EST news556536491 A rapid rate of land subsidence could make sea level rise estimates worse for one of Colombia's tourist destinations. This could serve as a warning sign to other coastal cities. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-satellite-subsidence-cartagena.html Environment Fri, 19 Nov 2021 09:21:30 EST news556536087