Global subsidence of river deltas

Abstract River deltas sustain dense human populations, major economic centres and vital ecosystems worldwide 1,2 . Rising sea levels and subsiding land threaten the sustainability of these valuable landscapes with relative sea-level rise and associated flood, land loss and salinization hazards 1–3 . Despite these risks, vulnerability assessments are impeded by the lack of contemporary, high-resolution, delta-wide subsidence observations 4 . Here we present spatially variable surface-elevation changes across 40 global deltas using interferometric synthetic aperture radar. Using this dataset, we quantify delta surface-elevation loss and show the prevalence and severity of subsidence in river deltas worldwide.…