It has long been known that the Chesapeake Bay region is sinking, and an extensive new study led by Virginia Tech now details how fast, with rates that vary widely.
It has long been known that the Chesapeake Bay region is sinking, and an extensive new study led by Virginia Tech now details how fast, with rates that vary widely.
The Virginia Tech study highlights how sinking land can worsen the effects of relative sea level rise, which combines global ocean rise with local land subsidence.
“There’s more flooding. There’s higher impacts from storm surges. You may have sunny day flooding,” Sarah Stamps, associate professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech, told WTOP. Impacts vary by location, she said.
The Laurentide ice sheet that covered almost all of Canada and many northern parts of the U.S. tens of thousands of years ago is a primary driver of the sinking land in the region. The ice was so thick and heavy that it pushed the land beneath it down. And like a slow geological seesaw over thousands of years, land nearby that the ice didn’t reach was pushed up.
When the sheet finally melted, the land that had been pushed up, including the Chesapeake Bay, resumed a slow, long-term subsidence.
The new study looked at land movement data gathered by satellite systems over the last five years and compared it with data from a 1974 study. Across the region, subsidence rates range from roughly 0.4 to 3 millimeters per year, with some areas sinking more quickly than others.
Ocean City, Maryland, is sinking at a rate of about 2.4 millimeters per year, and Hampton, Virginia, at about 2.3 millimeters per year. Both D.C. and Baltimore are sinking at about 1 millimeter per year, according to the five-year satellite analysis.
Researchers think the different rates may have to do with how much groundwater is being extracted in certain areas, but more study is needed.
“Overall, the entire Chesapeake Bay had a sinking signal. That was a little bit surprising because there are some studies out there that suggest some areas are uplifting, but we did not find that result,” Stamps said, adding earlier work used different time frames and methods.
The study results are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
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