FEST: "Land subsidence in deltas: causes, impacts, solutions"

Friday Earth Sciences Talk

Speaker and topic: Esther Stouthamer, “Land subsidence in deltas: causes, impacts, solutions”

Many low-lying river deltas host vast areas of intensely used land surface that are subsiding due to natural causes and human-induced activities. For the 21st century, predictions of subsidence rates in populated deltas outweigh those of sea-level  rise due to global warming, up to an order of magnitude. The physical consequences of subsidence are manifold and lead to serious economic damage. An urgent need exists to develop (innovative) subsidence management strategies and to show politicians and stakeholders what the impact of their management decisions will be on the mid and long term. Key to the development of such strategies is the understanding and quantification of the relative contribution of the individual subsidence processes induced by various drivers, including temporal variability and interactive effects of coeval processes causing subsidence.

With the Friday Earth Sciences Talks (FEST) we intend to bring the departments of Earth Sciences and Physical Geography together. The aim is to present (mostly) Utrecht-based Earth Sciences in an accessible way in order i) to stay familiar with each other’s work across disciplines and ii) to help (in particular MSc.) students in their orientation on possible graduation specialisations and future careers. Alumni are also invited.