Land subsidence is a slow-onset hazard with significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts globally. Often viewed primarily as a coastal issue linked to relative sea-level rise, subsidence also poses serious threats to inland urban centers, heightening flood risks, damaging infrastructure, and disrupting transportation networks. Despite its widespread effects, detailed spatial data capturing fine-scale variations in subsidence rates remain limited, impeding accurate infrastructure risk assessments.
To address this gap, they utilize space geodetic measurements from 2015 to 2021 to generate high-resolution subsidence maps for the 28 most populous U.S. cities. Our analysis reveals that at least 20 percent of the urban area is experiencing subsidence, predominantly driven by groundwater extraction. This phenomenon currently affects an estimated 34 million people. Furthermore, over 29,000 buildings are in zones classified as high or very high damage risk, underscoring the urgent need for mitigation and adaptation strategies.
These data are critical for informing targeted policies to enhance the resilience of urban infrastructure to this complex, slow-moving hazard.