Seattle is sinking millimeter by millimeter, and new research shows it’s more widespread — and riskier — than once suspected.
Why it matters: Land subsidence is an invisible but growing threat to urban infrastructure — cracking roads, destabilizing buildings and making low-lying areas even more flood-prone .
- In Seattle, it combines with sea level rise, seismic instability and aging buildings and infrastructure to heighten long-term risk.
Driving the news: In a peer-reviewed study published Thursday in Nature, researchers analyzed six years of satellite radar data in the 28 most populous U.S. cities.
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- They found that 25 of the 28 cities are subsiding, affecting more than 33 million people — over 10% of the U.S. population — who live on sinking land.
- The cities are sinking by 2 to 10 millimeters — or 0.08 to 0.39 inches — per year, the study found.
- The…