Science, Economics, and Policy of Global Groundwater Over-Extraction & Land Subsidence

Land subsidence (LS) is the phenomenon of the sudden or gradual sinking of the land surface in response to either natural processes, such as oxidation and vaporization of organic soils, or human activities such as oil mining or groundwater extraction, among others. Subsidence is a global problem, most studied and recognized, to different extents, in association with groundwater over-pumping of unconsolidated alluvial aquifers composed of a substantial fraction of fine-grained sediments. It is assessed that LS inflicts significant damages on local communities and the environment, such as infrastructure damage and collapse, soil fracture leading to a loss in life in some cases, reduced performance of hydrological systems, and malfunctioning of drainage systems, to name a few. As such, identifying the types of damages and quantifying them both in terms of the various physical impacts and their economic values, both short- and long-term would be an essential first step for preparing policies to address the problem.

We are not aware of works that assess the global impacts of LS in terms of social, environmental, and economic consequences. Neither are we aware of studies that assess globally the impact of LS on the loss of groundwater storage capacity due to the irreversibility of the LS (e.g., the medium porous composing an aquifer cannot regain its original porosity once compaction has taken place).