© Sonam Futi Sherpa for Virginia Tech.
Projected Inundation area from both subsidence and sea level rises under very low greenhouse gases emission scenario at year 2030, 2050, and 2100 (top panels, panels (a), (b), (c), respectively). The bottom panels (d), (e), (f) highlight zoomed-in inundation from sea level and subsidence at 2100.
New research by Virginia Tech scientists shows that sections of the Chesapeake Bay are sinking at rates of nearly a quarter an inch — or 7 millimeters — a year. Further, up-to-date knowledge of where the ground in the Chesapeake Bay area is sinking and by how much
is not included in the official planning maps that authorities use to assess the local flooding risk from rising sea levels, the researchers said.
This poses a significant challenge to present and future management efforts as it could under or overestimate flooding risk to coastal communities along the stretch of Virginia shoreline, said Manoochehr Shirzaei, an associate professor of radar remote sensing engineering and environmental security in the Department of Geoscieces, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science, and a member of the Virginia Tech National Security Institute.
Comment: It's reasonable to question what's really driving the subsidence, because it's not the only region of the planet that's subsiding, or rising, at alarming rates in recent years. And this is occurring alongside a variety of other geologic phenomenon such as sink holes and fissuring: