The subsidence of Mexico City of almost 50 centimeters a year will continue at this rate despite the termination of groundwater drilling in the 1950s.
The ScienceAlert site published research that takes leveling data from the last 15 years, 24 years of GPS data and measurements from space, showing that CDMX’s rate of sinking will continue.
The investigation ensures that the lake bed of Texcoco on which the city sits has become increasingly dry, causing the layers of clay to compress and crack at an “unstoppable rate.”
The team of American and Mexican scientists concluded that wide swaths of the ground under the city are constantly compacting and will continue to do so for 150 more years so that the subsidence would be up to 30 meters.
The sinking of the CDMX will continue
Currently, the city’s upper clay is already 17% compacted and these changes are “almost totally irreversible.”
Even if water levels were to rise, there is no hope of regaining most of the lost elevation and lost storage capacity of the aquifer.
The lakebed on which the city sits has been drying up more and more and this not only endangers infrastructure but also threatens the water supply of millions of its inhabitants.
Scientists first detected that Mexico City was sinking in the early 20th century, at a rate of approximately 8 centimeters per year.
By 1958, the subsidence increased to 29 centimeters per year, leading to the decision to limit the amount of water that could be drawn from wells in the city center.
Source: xataka.com.mx