Like other reclaimed lands around the world, some regions sink the ground due to compression of 0.4 inches of sediment per year.
A report released on February 10th revealed that the San Francisco Gulf region, particularly San Rafael, Cortemadera, Foster City and Bay Farm Island, “land is sinking at a steady speed of more than 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) per . The year is mainly due to sediment compression.”
Due to this subsidence, local sea levels are expected to rise at accelerated speeds.
Researchers used satellite radar to identify areas along California coastal areas where vertical land movements and sea surface changes.
According to the report, “local movements of one inch from space, the team has radar measurements taken by the ESA Sentinel-1 satellite, as well as motion speed data from global, globally based reception stations. We analyzed the navigation satellite system.
We then compared observations from the same location between 2015 and 2023.
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California’s fastest sinking section is in the central valley, up to 8 inches per year. This is due to the removal of groundwater in the event of droughts or rain that can shrink or inflate the underground aquifer.
Northern California may have sunk the mouths of the Russian River in San Francisco’s Marshlands, Monterey Bayes and Sonoma counties. Other areas, such as San Francisco and the large Sal Mountains under the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, have moved downwards due to slow landslides.
Scientists also discovered that not all areas along California’s coast are sunk. Santa Barbara, for example, is increasing by several millimeters a year due to refilling groundwater basins. According to the report, Long Beach is also rising in “where liquid extraction and injection occurs in oil and gas production.”
The study predicts that by 2050, California’s sea level will be 6-14.5 inches higher than the 2000 level. Glacier and ice melting is the main reason for higher water levels.
“In many parts of the world, like the landfills below San Francisco, the oceans themselves descend faster than they rise,” says Marin, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Goborsin said.
The researchers noted that the scale and velocity of elevation changes may be unpredictable due to both human factors such as groundwater pumps and wastewater injections and natural factors such as structural activity.
