Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on May 1, 2005 3:17:27 GMT -6
Chicago is Sinking While Canada is Rising
It appears that I am sinking into the Earth at a steady pace!...
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24-May-2004
We know that Venice and New Orleans are sinking—but Chicago? It turns out that melting Canadian glaciers are causing the land around Chicago to sink.The ground underneath the city is sinking at less than an inch a year, but this could eventually be enough to cause flooding.
Researchers at Northwestern University used 10 years of readings from global positioning satellites at more than 200 points across North America to measure how the ground is shifting. "All of Canada's going up," says geologist Seth Stein. "The U.S. is going down."
The reason? 20,000 years ago, the weight of glacial ice sheets weighed part of the Earth down. When the ice began to melt around 12,000 years ago, the land started to return to its original shape, forcing some areas to sink and others to rise. Regions south of the Canadian border are sinking, while regions north of the border are rising.
This means that while Canada is gaining land, it's losing water. Chuck South of Environment Canada says, "Water is moving from the Canadian side, slowly but surely, to the U.S. side. Over a century, [it will have] quite an effect."
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Oh man, that means my skies will be less and less, and my horizon closer and closer! Need higher ground!...
