Groundwater Loss Prompts More California Land Sinking

Researchers found that in spite of heavy rains in early 2017,groundwater extraction for agriculture and human use leads to a continual sinking of land, as seen from satellites.

Despite higher-than-normal amounts of rain in early 2017, the large agricultural and metropolitan communities that rely on groundwater in central California experienced only a short respite from an ongoing drought.

When the rain stopped, drought conditions returned and the ground has continued to sink, by up to a half-meter annually, according to a new Cornell study in Science Advances.

“With the heavy storms in early 2017, Californians were hopeful that the drought was over,” said Kyle Murray, a Cornell doctoral candidate in the field of geophysics. “There was a pause in land subsidence over a large area, and even uplift of the land in some areas. But by early summer the subsidence continued at a similar rate we observed during the drought.”

read more: https://www.enn.com/articles/55272-groundwater-loss-prompts-more-california-land-sinking

Posted by admin on Aug 30 2018. Filed under News at Now, News From Roots, Water & Wetland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry