Germany's Soils Subsidence/Sinkholes Blog

 


According to the website Research Gate, Germany has an increasing number of sinkholes that have been developing since the 1980's within large-scale depressions and are distributed over different kinds of surface materials; clayey mud, sandy gravel alluvium and evaporites (salt). 

GERMANY'S SOIL SUBSIDENCE/SINKHOLES

Tiny shifts in the land surface across the whole of Germany have been mapped for the first time, with the help of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission. As you can see in the map below, land- surface deformation, such as subsidence, often happens because of changes that take place underground such as groundwater extraction, mining, natural consolidation of sediments and rapid urbanization.


As Phys.org points out this ground motion can be a major threat, in both urban and agricultural areas, where continuous shifts over time can cause, for example, damage to buildings, roads, bridges, dykes, and other infrastructure, and can cause changes in the way surface water flows and accumulates, all of which has economic implications.

MITIGATION:

 Urban development projects and risk assessment efforts rely on ground motion monitoring, which is usually supplied by terrestrial surveying methods. Images from space, however, offer cost-effective, systematic, high-precision measurements over most of Earth's land surface. Copernicus Sentinel-1 is a two satellite mission delivering radar images that can map ground movement and help track changes as small as a few millimeters.

Germany's Federal Institute for Geosciences and natural Resources (BGR) has made good use of the mission's data to generate data products through its Ground motion Service. The result in Germany's first nationwide map ground deformation.

Authorities can use the data products to improve planning especially urban planning and even resolve issues of subsidence before they are visible to the naked eye.



https://www.researchgate.net>gernany>sinkholes

https://www.phys.org>earth science> Germany  


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