It’s not just rising sea levels – the land major cities are built on is actually sinking, NASA images show
by CBSnews
It’s not just rising sea levels – the land major cities are built on is actually sinking, NASA images show
by CBSnews
3 comments
Here’s a preview of the article:
Rising sea levels are threatening the East Coast of the U.S., but that’s not the only thing to worry about, according to NASA. Images shared by the space agency on Tuesday show the coast is actually sinking — including the land that holds major cities such as New York and Baltimore.
A NASA-funded team of scientists at Virginia Tech’s Earth Observation and Innovation Lab found the geographical problem is “happening rapidly enough to threaten infrastructure, farmland, and wetlands that tens of millions of people along the coast rely upon,” NASA said.
Scientists looked at satellite data and GPS sensors to monitor the motion of the coast and found that infrastructure in major cities like New York, Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia, is built on land that sank between the years of 2007 and 2020. The land subsided, or sank, by an average of 1 to 2 millimeters a year, but some counties in Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia saw their land sink twice or three times that fast.
**Read more:** [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-images-east-coast-cities-sinking-new-york-baltimore-rising-sea-levels-subsidence/?ftag=CNM-05-10abh9g](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-images-east-coast-cities-sinking-new-york-baltimore-rising-sea-levels-subsidence/?ftag=cnm-05-10abh9g)
I asked a pro & formally educated scientist friend (I’m just an autodidact), back in the nineties, what can happen by/from humans, tapping a (nonrenewable and) non-replaced mass like crude oil, from all over the mantle; if that mass over time could (geologically) impact the mantle. His reply:
*Water tables are replaced always by rain. Due to the viscus nature of crude oil, it cannot simply be replaced by water; and it is not. Pockets that are too porous to contain water, these areas do not become water tables.*
*Pockets where crude oil form cannot be water tables either; if sea water was used to fill them in, it would seep out over time, carrying with it some the chemicals in the oil. And some of those may make their way into long established water tables. Once any mass is removed, the land above will slowly but surely sink; it’s where we get sinkholes.*
To me, this would not be as noticeable in higher elevations, since there’s nothing around it to contrast it or gauge it by. Now we have what they’re using here; satellite data and GPS sensors to monitor over time, then extrapolating that time-collected data to form hypotheses. And we already know that earthquakes can be caused by Fracking.
But could this be a contributor? Would land sinking only take place at/above the point of extraction? Is this data only including along the coast line since this study focus is about sea level rise? Does its location next to an assumed constant (sea level), create a conflict in the data set? Is the sea aiding in the land sinking at that point?
With More Knowledge Comes More Questions!
The More I Learn The Less I Know!
[https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/1/pgad426/7504900](https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/1/pgad426/7504900)
[https://www.greenmatters.com/p/does-fracking-cause-earthquakes](https://www.greenmatters.com/p/does-fracking-cause-earthquakes)
Is it possible we’re sucking our aquifers dry and the land is sinking to fill the voids?