Mapping vertical land motion across the New York City area, researchers found the land sinking (indicated in blue) by about 0.06 inches (1.6 millimeters) per year on average. They also detected modest uplift (shown in red) in Queens and Brooklyn. White dotted lines indicate county/borough borders. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Rutgers University)
Parts of the New York City metropolitan area are sinking and rising at different rates due to factors ranging from land-use practices to long-lost glaciers, scientists have found. While the elevation changes seem small–fractions of inches per year–they can enhance or diminish local flood risk linked to sea-level rise.
The new study was published in Science Advances by a team of researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Rutgers University in New Jersey. The team analyzed upward and downward vertical land motion–also known as uplift and subsidence–across the metropolitan area from 2016 to 2023 using a remote-sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). The technique combines two or more 3D observations of the same region to reveal surface motion or topography.
Much of the motion they observed occurred in areas where prior modifications to Earth’s surface–such as land reclamation and the construction of landfills–made the ground looser and more compressible beneath subsequent buildings.
