Presenting the International Panel on Land Subsidence (IPLS) - Combat relative sea-level rise at global scale
- 1Soil Geography and Landscape Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands (philip.minderhoud@wur.nl)
- 2Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy (philip.minderhoud@unipd.it)
- 3Deltares Research Institute, Department of Subsurface and Groundwater Systems, Utrecht, the Netherlands
- 4Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, United States (shirzaei@vt.edu)
- 5Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy (pietro.teatini@unipd.it)
Accelerated relative sea-level rise (SLR) rate is driven by by changing climate and vertical land motion (VLM) at the world's coastlines. Today, many coastal environments and communities, such as river deltas, wetlands, and cities experience accelerated land subsidence rates due to human-induced processes such as groundwater extraction and coastal populations ( >500M people worldwide) experience, on average, a four times higher relative sea-level rate than the global mean average.
Although subsidence is the dominant force driving relative SLR worldwide, its effect is often still overlooked and/or not fully integrated into global and regional sea-level rise projections. As a result, SLR impact assessments underlying coastal adaptation plans for many governments around the world underestimate future relative SLR rates and consequent flood risks. It is more important than ever for the global scientific community on coastal land subsidence to unite, in a similar fashion as the IPCC has come into existence in the 80's, to combat the growing global challenge of land subsidence.
For this purpose the International Panel on Land Subsidence (IPLS) (www.IPLSubsidence.org) was recently launched. The IPLS initiative welcomes all experts from disciplines related to coastal land subsidence, elevation dynamics and relative sea-level rise. The IPLS is envisioned to grow in the coming years connecting the different research communities working on coastal VLM, to become a global focal point of scientific knowledge on coastal land subsidence and create consistent contemporary rate and projections of coastal VLM for the world’s coastlines.
The IPLS aims to connect the different research communities working on VLM and elevation change in the coastal zone, consolidate knowledge and identify gaps. The IPLS’s first milestones are to 1) present the First Global Assessment Report on Land Subsidence, including 21st-century projections of land elevation, to inform governments, scientific communities and the public worldwide and 2) propose a consistent framework to combine VLM and sedimentation dynamics across scales and disciplines, 3) properly integrate contemporary and projected VLM and coastal elevation change into IPCC's AR7.
The IPLS welcomes experts from all related disciplines to join the initiative and become part of this global effort.
How to cite: Minderhoud, P. S. J., Shirzaei, M., and Teatini, P.: Presenting the International Panel on Land Subsidence (IPLS) - Combat relative sea-level rise at global scale , EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13847, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13847, 2023.
