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Article by Charles W. Schmidt, MS, an award-winning science writer from Portland, ME, has written for Discover Magazine, Science, and Nature Medicine

Sea-level rise from a warming climate threatens to inundate coastlines around the world.¹ But some of the world’s most vulnerable coasts—those fringing flat delta plains, mainly in Southeast Asia—face the far more immediate threat of sinking land.² Induced mainly by human activities on a local rather than global scale, this phenomenon, known as land subsidence, can outpace sea-level rise substantially. Indonesia’s biggest city, Jakarta, is sinking at an average rate of 5–10 cm per year,³ much faster than the global rate of sea-level rise, which clocks in at 3.2 mm per year, according to the recent estimates.¹ 

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Project scientists are collecting data and sampling the subsurface geology of the Mekong Delta. They plan to create a sophisticated hydrogeological model that predicts subsidence and saltwater intrusion rates over varying scenarios of population and economic growth. “What we’re ultimately trying to do is develop more sustainable management strategies for the Mekong Delta,” says team leader Esther Stouthamer, an earth scientist and associate professor at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��.

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(EHP | Volume 123 | issue 8 | august 2015)

1. IPCC. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Stocker TF, et al., eds.). Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY:Cambridge ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� Press (2014). Available:  [accessed 23 June 2015].

2. Renaude FG, et al. Tipping from the Holocene to the Anthropocene: how threatened are major world deltas? Curr Opin Environ Sustain 5(6):644–654 (2013); doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2013.11.007.

3. Abidin HZ, et al. Environmental Impacts of Land Subsidence in Urban Areas of Indonesia [report]. Presented at: FIG Working Week 2015: From the Wisdom of the Ages to the Challenges of the Modern World, Sofia, Bulgaria, 17–21 May 2015. Available: ​s/fig_proceedings/fig2015/papers/ts04i/T​S04I_abidin_andreas_et_al_7568.pdf [accessed 23 June 2015].