Excerpt:
Coastal cities all over the world are sinking — a geological process called subsidence — and it’s happening at a rate that makes scientists nervous. If these bits of land didn’t have important cities on them, it’s likely nobody would notice, or, in some cases, that they wouldn’t be sinking at all.
Many big cities sit near the ocean. They became cities in the first place because their ports facilitated trade and travel by sea…
Subsidence happens for a variety of reasons. Often it’s from extracting water, oil, natural gas or minerals from the ground through activities like pumping, fracking or mining. Earthquakes can cause subsidence, as well as erosion, the formation of sinkholes, soil compaction and other geologic processes.
All this is happening while climate change is causing ice in the polar regions of the world to melt, resulting in an increased volume of seawater in the world’s oceans. Coastal cities are not only in danger of submerging, but also of natural disasters like hurricanes.
Here are seven cities that are sinking, and why…
Jakarta, located on the northwest coast of the island of Java, is the capital city of Indonesia, and the fastest sinking city in the world — in some places it’s settling around a foot (30.5 centimeters) per year. About 40 percent of the city sits below sea level, and flooding is common, partly because of the rising of the Java Sea that surrounds it, and partly due to illegal well drilling. Scientists warn that by 2030, much of Jakarta will be uninhabitable…
Today the five boroughs of New York are covered in over a million buildings, weighing approximately 1.68 trillion pounds (762 billion kilograms).
“The weight and local geology is a secondary factor in the case of New York,” says Matt Wei, a geophysicist and professor in the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. “The dominant reason they city is sinking is glacial isostatic adjustment…”
Houston, Texas, located on the Gulf of Mexico, is experiencing rapid subsidence. Built on the flat, low mouth of a river delta, Houston has never had far to fall in terms of elevation, but like Jakarta, excessive groundwater extraction has been the main culprit in its sinking.
“Houston slowed their subsidence problem down by water regulation, but they still have a big problem,” says Wei…
The port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is sinking at a rate of around 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) per year, and at this point the city is already around 90 percent below sea level. Although the Dutch are famous for protecting themselves from the sea with technologies like dams, dikes, pumps and seawalls, these are only short-term fixes…
Virginia Beach, Virginia, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, is the fastest-sinking city on the east coast of the U.S. The reasons are a combination of the tribulations of Houston mixed with the trials of New York — the already low-lying area is sinking due to overzealous groundwater extraction, mixed with the resettling of land once covered by an ancient sheet of ice. Mingled with the threat of sea level rise, scientists predict the water in Virginia Beach will rise upwards of two feet (60 centimeters) by 2050…
Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok is home to over 10 million people, but flooding is a huge problem. Situated at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River delta, Bangkok historically made concessions to the sea and the river — canals in its streets, floating markets and houses on stilts were common sights 50 years ago. But modern times have brought in the same kind of asphalt roads and high rise buildings found in any other big city in the world…
The most famous sinking city by far is Venice, Italy. Home to an intricate web of canals, Venice was built in the 5th century and has always had the Adriatic Sea, with its exceptional acqua alta high tides, to contend with. The city’s founders partially knew what they were doing when they built the city on a salt marsh completely surrounded by water. What they couldn’t know was that the city sits on a tectonic plate…
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