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I worked as a geotechnical engineer for almost a decade, working on (amongst other things) landslides in mountain passes. It was a fun job! I like this article
by clickety_clack 1y ago
I worked as a geotechnical engineer for almost a decade, working on (amongst other things) landslides in mountain passes. It was a fun job!
I like this article. Geoscience isn’t well understood by most people, so I usually get reminded of the Gell-Mann Effect whenever I read a news article about it. But, this one correctly frames landslides as having created these feature in the first place, and that they were always going to fall at some point, rather than treating them as eternal features.
The features we see around us that seem so constant, like mountains, rivers, shorelines, lakes and seas, are all in a state of flux. Geological processes under some of our most populous cities are moving them by measurable amounts every year, and the numbers aren’t microscopic (up and down too, not just the sideways movement many people have heard about). Where once there were sea beds, there are now jagged mountains, and there will sometime be fields and then seas again.
- hinkley 1y agoI learned recently that parts of Malaysia are subsiding more than 20 times faster than Venice. Ground water depletion can cause a lot of issues and at least in theory we could stop that.
- burkaman 1y agoThis is a problem across the whole planet: https://www.propublica.org/article/water-aquifers-groundwater-rising-ocean-levels https://www.propublica.org/article/water-aquifers-groundwate.... One thing I learned from that article is that the California Central Valley is 28 feet lower than it was 100 years ago because of groundwater depletion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence).
- simonebrunozzi 1y agoAnd Miami.
- BurningFrog 1y agoJakarta is sinking by 5-10 cm per year on average, and the northern part sinks by 28 cm per year! The ocean is rising by 0.45 cm per year. This is one reason Indonesia is building a new capital city on Borneo.
- hinkley 1y agoYes! Jakarta seems to be the worst. They’re trying to build a whole other city to replace it.
- malyonsus 1y ago"Geologic time includes now", as they say in climbing.
- hydrogen7800 1y agoI visited the Indian Ladder Trail not far from Albany NY, and there is a section where you walk under a rock ledge at the bottom of a sheer cliff. Even though it had probably been that way for millennia, I still felt a bit queazy walking underneath. https://parks.ny.gov/parks/128/details.aspx https://parks.ny.gov/parks/128/details.aspx
- beezle 1y agoIt is not an uncommon occurence in the White Mountains for stray boulders to injure and sometimes kill hikers. Just another reason not to wear headphones/buds while hiking, even a split second warning could be critical.
- stockresearcher 1y agoThere’s a nice stream that feeds into a river near a family member’s home in northeast Ohio. It’s got crystal clear water and a gravel stream bed - the kids love to flip over rocks to find and catch crayfish. On the opposite side of the bank is a sheer wall of sandstone about 20 feet tall. If you stand there for any length of time, you can hear it cracking and every 30-45 seconds you’ll hear (and maybe see) a small rock or a pebble come down and splash into the water. (It’s been doing that for decades or longer and nobody has ever seen anything larger come down so I’ve always felt it was perfectly safe to be on the opposite bank)
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoReminds me of death, which, while not entirely the same, has certain similarities. We always see death as something perpetually in the future. But death can strike at any moment, like the proverbial thief in the night. Not only that, when it does come, it will not be in the future. It will be lived and experienced in the now, just like this very moment. It's like we're on a speeding train with no view of what's in front of us. At any moment, that train might slam into an impenetrable wall or hurtle off a cliff or sink into the depths of the ocean.
- metalman 1y ago"Where once there were sea beds, there are now jagged mountains, and there will sometime be fields and then seas again." true, except next time around the mountains will have sedimentary metamorphic rock faces with pontiac bumpers embeded in them , anthrolithic assemblies?, there are many things made from alloys that are essentialy impervious to almost all chemical attack and other objects and piles so massive as to guarantee some things will retain a clear signature of bieng manufactured it is strange to think that things here now, will continue to exist into the far future
- throwawayoldie 1y agoThat blew my mind. Geology is going to be a wild discipline in the far future.
- financetechbro 1y agoAllow me to blow your mind once more. Earth is already starting to integrate waste into its geology https://youtu.be/Q-0ONrHP_2w?si=NHuCQIE72PJndqR4 https://youtu.be/Q-0ONrHP_2w?si=NHuCQIE72PJndqR4
- snickerbockers 1y agoThere's a famous oopart called the London[, texas] hammer which is a hammer of 19th century vintage which was found fossilized and embedded in a rock in Texas. I can't remember what the explanation is but somehow it actually underwent fossilization over the course of a few decades and came out looking like it was tens of thousands of years old.
- WalterBright 1y agoThe Seattle Times has, twice now, hilariously reported that the sea level at Seattle has risen 8 inches in the last century, caused by climate change. It didn't question why this hasn't happened elsewhere in the world. Further investigation showed that the land Seattle sits on has sunk 6 inches. (This may be due to the weight of the city buildings, or plate tectonics.) There clearly is considerable difficulty in finding a reliable "zero reference point" from which to measure from.
- consumer451 1y agoThe limestone in the Florida Keys is not sinking, afaik. There, around a foot (.3m) rise in the last 100 years is indicated by the sea level data. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8724580 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....
- SlowTao 1y agoThat is also happening in Manhattan/greater new York. The land is still rebounding from the ice age and the coasts happen to be at the point where they will slowly sink. Ocean level rise is also an issue but the base geology accelerates the issue in those locations
- capitainenemo 1y agoYep. It's all along both coasts, but more to the north. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
- twoWhlsGud 1y agohttps://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-... I don't see what's funny about 4 inches just in the last three decades. 8 inches over the last hundred plus years at seattle https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9447130 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... seems very much in line then (given the lower rates before 1992). "Further investigation" was perhaps motivated by the search for something besides truth?
- rene_d 1y agoAsianomics released a video on how withdrawing groundwater can dramatically lower the elevation of entire cities — I was surprised by how large an effect just a couple of years of human activity can have. China's sinking land problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu_Y4hJmqGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu_Y4hJmqGE
- password4321 1y agoHumans have pumped enough groundwater to change the tilt of the Earth (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366137
- gcanyon 1y agoCalifornia's Central Valley has subsided as much as 28 feet in the past century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence