underneath millions of peoples' feet in China's major cities due to human activities, putting the country's coastal areas more at's urban areas comprising 29 per cent of the country's population are sinking faster than 3 millimeters a year, according to theShanghai is one of the coastal cities significantly exposed to both land subsidence and projected sea level rise. Roughly a quarter of the country's coasts will be lower than sea level, according to new research.
The impact of sinking is typically worse along the coasts, where the sea level is rising at the same time. This combination exposes more land, people and property to destructive flooding. Thursday's study is "scientifically robust" and did "a fine job" of highlighting that subsidence is not just a "coastal problem," said Leonard Ohenhen, a doctoral researcher at Virginia Tech who recently published a study on land subsidence in the US.