Land subsidence in the Mid-Atlantic United States: Creeping disaster threatens water, energy, and climate security

Abstract

This review addresses land subsidence resulting from earth-system processes compounded by anthropogenic drivers, including water-level controls for infrastructure protection, groundwater use, and hydrocarbon development. Coastal and inland subsidence in the Mid-Atlantic United States, including the Chesapeake Bay, is a creeping disaster with distinct but interlinked threats for water, energy, and climate security. Subsidence is characterized by irreversibility on human timescales and only indirect policy responses. Subsidence governance – currently centered on complex legislation and multi-tiered institutional arrangements across federal, state, and private-sector actors – must be extended with improved public information to involve civil society in order to more effectively address the challenges of subsidence disaster.