Source: news.bbc.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, September 2009: Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking, increasing the flood risk faced by hundreds of millions of people, scientists report. Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land. Rivers affected include the Krisha River, Nile, Rhone and Yangtze.
About half a billion people live in these regions, the researchers note in the journal Nature Geoscience. “We argue that the world’s low-lying deltas are increasingly vulnerable to flooding, either from their feeding rivers or from ocean storms,” said Albert Kettner from the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.
“This study shows there are a host of human-induced factors that already cause deltas to sink much more rapidly than could be explained by sea level alone.”