Man-Induced Land Subsidence
How would you feel if your land had sunk 9 m in the past 50 years because of human activity? It happened in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, land subsidence has been caused by man’s activities in at least 37 of the 50 states of the United States and affects more than 40,000 km2 in this country alone. Data from a few sites where economic impact is documented suggest a total annual cost to the nation of more than $100 million; worldwide, the total economic impact is astounding and growing. These nine papers, dedicated to Joseph Fairfield Poland's life work, constitute a major contribution to measuring and understanding this problem. They are arranged in three categories: (1) fluid withdrawal from porous media; (2) drainage of organic soil; and (3) collapse into man-made and natural cavities.
Organic soil subsidence
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Published:January 01, 1984
Abstract
Organic soil subsidence occurs mainly with drainage and development of peat for agriculture. Subsidence occurs either from densification (loss of buoyancy, shrinkage, and compaction) or from actual loss of mass (biological oxidation, burning, hydrolysis and leaching, erosion, and mining). Densification usully occurs soon after drainage is established. Slow, continuous loss of mass is due mainly to biological oxidation. Erosion is minor except in specific sites. Mining losses vary greatly and depend upon direct removal of the materials.
Subsidence rates are determined mainly by type of peat, depth to water table, and temperature. Subsidence losses have been carefully measured in several locations (e.g., the Florida Everglades), and predictions of future subsidence developed in 1950 have proved reliable.
Peat drainage and subsidence have several consequences: loss of plant rooting depth where the substrate is unfavorable (stony, acidic, saline), increased pumping for drainage, instability of roads and other structures, increase in nutrient outflows, colder surface temperature during winter nights, and increase of CO2 flux to the global atmosphere
The water table for organic soils should be held as high as crop and field conditions allow to reduce subsidence.
Computer models offer methods for refining oxidation rate processes and prediction of subsidence losses where adequate calibration data are available. Remote sensing offers a method of assessing organic soil area and drainage changes. These new technologies should improve our assessment, and guide our management, of organic soil resources.
- causes
- classification
- computers
- data processing
- drainage
- engineering geology
- Europe
- Everglades
- field studies
- Florida
- Gleys
- ground water
- history
- Histosols
- land subsidence
- models
- Netherlands
- organic compounds
- organic materials
- organic residues
- peat
- polders
- prediction
- sediments
- soil surveys
- soils
- surveys
- United States
- water table
- Western Europe
- Belle Glade