Geologists warn that Washington, D.C., is sinking into the muck

Here’s another thing for Congress to worry about. Washington is sinking, and not for political reasons. Geologists now claim that the land around the nation’s capital “is sinking rapidly” and that the city of Washington, could drop by six or more inches in the future. The area is sinking faster than any location on the East Coast, they say, warning that the phenomenon could threaten “the region’s monuments, roads, wildlife refuges, and military installations.” The research team included geologists from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey, and three other institutions.

“It’s ironic that the nation’s capital - the place least responsive to the dangers of climate change - is sitting in one of the worst spots it could be in terms of this land subsidence. Will the Congress just sit there with their feet getting ever wetter?” asks Paul Bierman, one of the Vermont geologists, and the senior author of the paper.

There was some “drill, baby, drill” of the geological kind involved in their findings.

The team reached their conclusion following extensive drilling - seventy boreholes, many up to a hundred feet deep - in the coastal plain of Maryland. The drilling was done in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, incidentally.

After examining sediment and using data from high resolution maps, the geologists reached the consensus that the sea level in the Chesapeake Bay region is rising at twice the global average rate - and faster than elsewhere on the East Coast. The team including researchers from Utah State University, Berkeley Geochronology Center and Imperial College, London

Blame it on a phenomenon they call “forebulge collapse.” Consider that there was once a mile-high ice sheet on North America that was heavy enough to push the Earth’s surface up at one end. That’s the forebulge. Once the ice melted - about 20,000 years ago - it all sank down again. And there’s the collapse.

The team is already sounding the alarm on their “bullet-proof model” of what’s to come. Researcher Mr. Bierman wonders if Congress will go into “forebulge denial” over their findings.

“Right now is the time to start making preparations. Six extra inches of water really matters in this part of the world,” says lead author Ben DeJong, also from the Vermont campus. He adds that their findings increase “urgency to the models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that project roughly one to three or more feet of global sea-level rise by 2100 from global warming.”

The results were presented this week in GSA Today, an academic journal published by the Geological Society of America. Find the paper here