ScienceDaily: Data shows New Orleans’ sinking rate
NEW ORLEANS, May 31 (UPI) — The most detailed radar satellite map ever taken of the New Orleans area suggests the city is sinking as much as an inch a year.
The data — released Wednesday on the eve of the start of 2006′s Atlantic hurricane season — suggests the sinking might explain why some of the city’s levees were breached during Hurricane Katrina last year, newscientist.com reported.
Falk Amelung of the University of Miami and colleagues used 33 images obtained by the Canadian RADARSAT satellite between 2002 and 2005 to assess land subsidence in New Orleans. He told newscientist.com the researchers had to rely on Canada’s technology because the United States lacks a radar satellite for the purposes of collecting data for the scientific community.
The data show most of New Orleans is sinking at an average rate of 6 millimeters, or a quarter of an inch, per year, although in some areas the annual rate is as high as 29 mm, or slightly more than one inch annually.
The research appears in the journal Nature.
