The coastal areas of major cities around the world are facing a crisis that is about to be "swallowed" . Continuous sinking has become the biggest crisis facing coastal cities, and being "swallowed" by the waves may no longer be a distant concept. 2022 satellite data shows that coastal cities around all face similar problems - sea level rise and ground sinking. The accumulation of two factors will cause coastal areas to face more severe flood risk than imagined.
Ground settlement is a slow but continuous process. It is not surprising that the changes in the landform are described as changing worlds. In the time when the passage of months or even decades is used as the unit for calculation units , a large area of the earth is slowly sinking. As the research progresses deepen, researchers found that the sinking of coastal cities has become a global problem.
According to the survey, 1,596 cities around the world are suffering from the risk of "ground subsidence", and 57% of these 1,596 cities are in frequent flood areas. In addition, my country occupies 20 seats among the cities with the highest risk of flooding in the world. These cities are spread across the long coastline and are important coastal cities in my country.
, which has caused heated discussion in the environment of global warming , is far from catching up with the sinking of land. This phenomenon is extremely obvious in Asia. Under the opposite force of land and sea level, floods may occur in most coastal cities in Asia.
Through measurement and comparison of satellite data, the researchers conducted statistics on the sinking rate of 99 coastal cities, which further confirmed this terrible inference. Take Indonesia capital Jakarta as an example. This city has the most densely populated city. During the five years from 2015 to 2020, the city's land sinking speed was almost 15 times the global average sea level rise speed. is the well-deserved city with the fastest sinking speed on the earth. In addition to Jakarta, four other cities in Asia are also facing sinking, namely Chittagong, Bangladesh, Tianjin, China, Manila, Philippines, and Karachi, Pakistan. In addition to Asia, North America, Europe, Africa and Australia are also facing sinking crises. According to calculations, 33 cities around the world sink more than 1 cm a year.
The reasons for land settlement are extremely complex. In addition to natural factors, an important factor in causing urban sinking today is heavy loading. People's excessive exploitation of groundwater, oil and natural gas has become one of the main reasons for land sinking. "Geophysical Research Express" predicts that: The surge in urban population and the increase in demand for groundwater will inevitably lead to weakening of the underground aquifers. With the birth of the industrial revolution , most developed cities have begun to develop rapidly since the mid-20th century. In order to ensure that everyone can drink enough clean drinking water, urban managers can only increase their efforts to exploit groundwater. Although the problem of urban water use was solved, the excessive extraction of groundwater by led to stratigraphic vacuum, which eventually led to the subsidence of the city.
By viewing the Google Earth images of some areas with faster sinking speeds in cities, they found that the sinking area is mainly distributed in residential or commercial districts . From this point of view, the deepest reason for the sinking of is the human plunder of earth resources, the exploitation of groundwater in cities and industrial oil and natural gas. This series of behaviors have all exacerbated the current situation of land subsidence.
UNESCO sponsored a professional team in 2021, and they have established a global land settlement model in Spain. The model shows that as of 2024, nearly one-fifth of the world's population will face land settlement problems due to the depletion of surface groundwater. Sinking not only damages the water storage capacity of the surface aquifer, but also leads to the collapse of some infrastructure such as high-rise buildings.After the shallow surface is destroyed, the water absorption capacity of deeper aquifers will also be greatly weakened, making the surface altitude flush with sea level, the ability of coastal cities to invade below waves will be greatly weakened, and flood disasters will occur frequently.
The settlement caused by groundwater depletion is a slow and gradual process. At first, people would not regard it as a big problem. As the accumulation of changes occurs, the amount of settlement begins to increase. In just ten years, the Indonesian capital Jakarta has sunk 2.5 meters, and the backflow of Java Sea has caused a large number of buildings and streets to fall. There is also the , the world's lowest sea level, the Netherlands , which has long since caused one-quarter of its land to be lower than sea level due to ground settlement. If the situation continues to worsen, the coastal city built by humans with great effort will become the new century Atlantis .
unscrupulous groundwater mining continues, which makes many regions around the world face settlement problems. Although the storage capacity of underground aquifers is irreversible, 's reuse of water resources and the replenishment of aquifers may have a certain remedial effect. Perhaps it is time to supervise the city's projects to mine groundwater.
Coastal cities sinking problem is not without a turning point. In the 1960s, some areas in California, the United States also faced the severe problem of sinking. When cities changed groundwater management measures, the sinking speed was greatly reduced. Due to the change of the government's groundwater mining strategy, the sinking speed has slowed down significantly. It is not too late to make up for the loss of the sheep. Correct decisions and supervision of can definitely effectively solve the problem of ground subsidence caused by human activities. Only in this way can man and nature coexist more harmoniously and the development of human society be more sustainable.
#I want to go to headlines# #Telephone Creation Challenge#
