According to a recent study, the city of New York it is gradually sinking, due to the huge buildings that characterize its urban landscape.
Experts warn that the city is becoming increasingly vulnerable to flooding and rising sea levels, consequences of climate change.
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What does the study indicate?
In 2020, the metropolis of New York had a population of 8.8 million, making it the most populous in the United States. Naturally, to accommodate this huge population and its activities, the construction of ever larger buildings is a necessity.
The research, published in the journal Earth's Future, suggests that the city's own weight may be compressing the soil over it. which it was built, contributing to rising sea levels in the region and making flooding more dangerous.
The researchers sought to understand how a city's weight might influence sea level rise in its area, and New York, because of its size, was the perfect location for this investigation.
The research team assessed how the city's extensive infrastructure impacts ground subsidence, a phenomenon known such as subsidence, which can be caused by natural processes, such as erosion, or by human activities, such as mining.
The researchers' first step was to determine the weight of the city which, for the purposes of this study, comprises all 1,084,954 structures distributed across its five districts.
They then created a grid model of the city and analyzed the “footprint” and height of each building from a database. Using construction standards, they were able to calculate the weight in each grid square.
Geologists' calculations indicate that structures in New York exert a combined pressure of 764 billion kilograms on the ground.
According to the study, the financial center of the United States is sinking at an average rate of one to two millimeters per year. Some sites, built on more fragile or grounded terrain, are sinking up to 4.5 millimeters a year.
However, Tom Parsons, lead researcher on the study, argues that the solution is not to build fewer buildings. According to him, the main reason for the sinking in New York is the tectonic movement.
The forecast is that this sinking will intensify the effects of rising sea levels, resulting from global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps around the world.
