Beijing sinking by up to 4 inches a year, study shows

A new study led by Beijing-based researchers used radar to survey land elevation and found that the Chinese capital has sunk an alarming 14 inches in the last decade. “We are now carrying out a detailed analysis of the impacts of subsidence on critical infrastructure (e.g. high-speed railways) in the Beijing plain”, the study’s authors wrote in an email to The Guardian. But today it looks like China’s capital faces its biggest threat from environmental factors that come from beneath this sinking city.

“A new study using satellite imagery reveals parts of Beijing – particularly its central business district – are subsiding each year by more than four inches”. Researchers believe that excessive pumping of groundwater underneath the city is the main reason behind the slow collapse of the city.

Beijing sits in a dry plain where groundwater has accumulated over millennia.

As that water is removed, the now dried soil compacts and the city sinks due to a process called subsidence.

The uneven sinking of the city poses a major threat to the infrastructure, says the research, published in the journal Remote Sensing.

Tens of thousands of water wells are thought to exist in and around Beijing, many of them used in farming and landscaping. Despite the Chinese government’s authority over the installation of wells in Beijing and throughout China, environmentalists say officials have been inconsistent in applying this regulatory power, according to Tech Times.

The districts of Chaoyang, Changping, Shunyi, and Tongzhou are the most severely impacted areas.

Beijing doesn’t have enough water to begin with.

This is especially true for the high-speed railway that keeps this city at a constant flow of people going to and from their hundreds of thousands of destinations each day.

In 2015 China inaugurated a mega-engineering project aimed at mitigating Beijing’s water crisis. A year ago canals and tunnels in an elaborate network were completed. These were constructed to divert 44.8 billion cubic meters of water to the capital. In January 2015, the Chaoyang district planned to remove more than 360 water wells that would reduce 10 million cubic meters (353 million cubic feet) of underground water.