Major cities of United States are sinking, warns NASA

The increasing sea levels are not only threatening the United States East Coast but are also actually sinking some of the major cities of the country like New York and Baltimore, according to NASA images.

A NASA-funded team of scientists, working at Virginia Tech's Earth Observation and Innovation Lab found that the geographical problem is "happening rapidly enough to threaten infrastructure, farmland, and wetlands that tens of millions of people along the coast rely upon".

The scientists studied satellite data and GPS sensors to understand the motion of the coast and discovered that infrastructure in major cities like Norfolk, Baltimore,New York and Virginia, is built on land which has considerably sunken between 2007 and 2020.

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The land sank by an average of 1 to 2 millimetres every year. Some counties in Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia also witnessed the sinking of the land at twice or thrice the speed.

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The land in marshes sank by more than 3 millimetres every year, as per the scientists. The forests have also suffered displacement because of the intrusion of saltwater and the subsiding land.

However, wildlife is not the only thing which has been affected. Nearly 897,000 structures, which include highways and airports, are present on the land which is subsiding.

The findings, which followed another study carried out by the Virginia Tech lab, were published in PNAS Nexus.

Mid-Atlantic region sinking further: NASA images

The maps were created by NASA using data collected by satellites from the US, Japan and Europe.

In the images, the Mid-Atlantic region was seen sinking more, caused by the Laurentide ice sheet, which started retreating 12,000 years ago and led to the sinking of the region downwards.

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Geophysicist at Virginia Tech Leonard Ohenhen, while speaking to Newsweek, said, "In this research, we analyzed satellite radar data to assess how land subsidence increases the vulnerability of communities, properties and infrastructure to coastal hazards. Our major findings show that between 2,000 to 74,000 square kilometres of land area, which is home to 1.2 to 14 million people and 476,000 to 6.3 million properties, are sinking at a rate of 1 to 2 millimetres per year."

"This sinking land affects more than half of the infrastructure in several major cities, putting them at an increased risk of flooding and other coastal hazards," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)