Journal Articles Geophysical Research Letters Year : 2013

Is land subsidence increasing the exposure to sea level rise in Alexandria, Egypt?

Abstract

Delta margins are subject to relatively high rates of land subsidence and have the potential to significantly exacerbate future changes in sea levels predicted by global warming models used in impact studies. Through a combined analysis of GPS and persistent scatterer interferometry data, we determine that most of the coastline of Alexandria has been subject to moderate land subsidence over the past decade (0.4 mm/year on average and up to 2 mm/year locally). This contrasts to previous studies that suggested subsidence in excess of 3 mm/year. Based on our findings, we infer that on multi-century to millennia timescales, land subsidence in the area of Alexandria is dominated by tectonic setting and earthquakes or gravitational collapse episodes of a growth fault, whereas on shorter inter-seismic decadal to century timescales, subsidence rates are likely steady and moderate, in agreement with natural compaction and dewatering of the observed Holocene sediment layer.

Domains

Earth Sciences
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Woppelmann_et_al_2013_GRL_Cecile.pdf (801) Télécharger le fichier
Origin Publisher files allowed on an open archive
Loading...

Dates and versions

hal-00825699 , version 1 (24-11-2013)

Identifiers

Cite

Guy Woppelmann, Gonéri Le Cozannet, Marcello de Michele, Daniel Raucoules, Anny Cazenave, et al.. Is land subsidence increasing the exposure to sea level rise in Alexandria, Egypt?. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013, 40 (12), pp.2953-2957. ⟨10.1002/grl.50568⟩. ⟨hal-00825699⟩
353 View
744 Download

Altmetric

Share

More