Humans Have Reclaimed 'Land Size of Luxembourg' Since 2000 51
Land reclamation is nothing new, but during this century there has been a significant rise in the creation of artificial land by humans, with a recent study showing that developers have added more than 2,500 sq km -- an area equivalent to the size of Luxembourg -- to coastlines since 2000. The Guardian reports: Using satellite imagery, Dhritiraj Sengupta, from the University of Southampton, and his colleagues analysed land changes in 135 large cities. Their results, published in the journal Earth's Future, show that much of the recent land reclamation has occurred in the global south, with China, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates leading the way. Shanghai alone has added about 350 sq km of land. Most of the projects were driven by port expansion, a need for urban space and industrialization, while a small handful were "prestige" projects such as the palm tree-shaped islands of Dubai.
the GS (Score:2)
Their results, published in the journal Earth's Future, show that much of the recent land reclamation has occurred in the global south, with China, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates leading the way
Let me guess . . . it means you still practice slavery.
Re: the GS (Score:2)
It's interesting that without any international coordination we were able to not only create new land at the rate global warming is causing the seas to rise, but we're actually beating it!
Imagine if we're were all working together on this! /sarcasm
Re: the GS (Score:4, Interesting)
The reclaimed land is shallow, and much of the "fill" is dredged from the seafloor elsewhere. So the contribution to rising sea levels is negligible and possibly even negative.
There are also areas where we can go the other way: Depressions that can be flooded.
The Qattara Depression can be flooded with a canal to the Mediterranean. The 150-meter drop can be used to generate electricity. As the salinity increases, the osmotic gradient can generate even more electricity. The extra evaporation can help bring rainfall to western Egypt and the Nile Valley.
Lake Assal [wikipedia.org], in Djibouti, is another good candidate for flooding.
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Really, Florida is 170312.438159474688 sq. km, I think there will be a ways to go before we reclaim much of that state once it is under water.
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It's Florida. Do you really want to waste money on reclaiming that? I'd rather think most people would breath a sigh of relief when it's gone.
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Florida Man Learns to Breathe Water Just Before Being Killed by Alligator!
But how much land ... (Score:4)
are we losing due to rising sea levels ?
Re: But how much land ... (Score:2)
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You are either severely misinformed or are trolling. A simple search for "sea level rise" will show a plethora of articles that talk about the problem. Eg sea levels are now rising at a rate of 3.7 mm (0.146 inches) per year [wikipedia.org] and Seas are predicted to rise a foot by 2050 [nationalgeographic.com].
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...and also coastal erosion - i.e. the 'natural' loss of land to the sea. In the UK we regularly see news about houses being demolished because they're about to fall into the sea due to an imminent cliffside collapse and so on. Did they measure how much we lose to these methods?
Re: Isostatic rebound (Score:2)
The obvious solution is to have everybody move over to the high side to rebalance the land.
More evidence of humanity's craziness (Score:1)
The Earth has milllions upon millions of square miles of unused land that could be put to good use with fairly minimal effort - at least minimal comparing to creating brand new land from scratch.
But no: humans clump together in tight spots and then terraform the land around where they clump at great expense, both in terms of money and environmental impact. It's sheer madness.
Re:More evidence of humanity's craziness (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Earth has milllions upon millions of square miles of unused land that could be put to good use with fairly minimal effort - at least minimal comparing to creating brand new land from scratch.
But no: humans clump together in tight spots and then terraform the land around where they clump at great expense, both in terms of money and environmental impact. It's sheer madness.
It's because most humans seem to want to live by the seaside.
But don't worry, with the looming global meltdown, a good amount of those millions of square miles of unused land will become oceanfront property.
Re: More evidence of humanity's craziness (Score:2)
Already planned for it. I have my second property right alone the line the ocean should be at soon.
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The seaside is where you want to be if you want convenient trade. Note that many major metropolitan areas grew up around ports or rivers, which in turn made them major trading hubs. Not as necessary in the modern age, but there are other reasons today - you're land locked or have constricted borders, such as being a city state, so it's cheaper for real estate developers to reclaim shallow waters and build there. Dam up the river, drain the delta, then build now and worry about flooding or earthquakes lat
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But no: humans clump together in tight spots and then terraform the land around where they clump at great expense, both in terms of money and environmental impact.
Don't worry about it too much. Eventually AI will take over, enslave us all in a VR world, and then use this as part of a speech to the would-be protagonist about how humanity is analogous to a plague.
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Perhaps you're just missing important information, like, the reasons people choose to settle in one place rather than another. Maybe there is greater utility in one square acre next to a seaport than there is in a thousand acres of Arizona desert.
That's it? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not impressive at all, cause Luxembourg is pretty damn tiny. You can drive across it in less than an hour.
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You make it sound as if you could drive *around* it with a fast car in less than an hour.
But be warned: they have automatic speed controls and flashes on the highways.
So the best way is to use a friends name and credit cart: for the rented car.
And: seriously do not stop for a Belgium beer, or the *real* french fries when you cut through a short part of Belgium, it could ruin your trip/bet.
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But be warned: they have automatic speed controls and flashes on the highways.
Actually, driving across it from west to east (Arlon to Trier) can be done in less than 56 minutes, observing the speed limit: Openstreetmap [openstreetmap.org].
Just don't do it in the morning hours: traffic jams, and speed limit lowered to 90km/h rather than the usual 130km/h.
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Well, I was obviously joking. ... usually I use trains though. In LUX: public transport is cost free, btw.
But the point is: if there was a road going around it: you could probably manage to to the circle in roughly an hour, too.
Last time I want through Lux/Bel by car, I actually got flashed
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But the point is: if there was a road going around it: you could probably manage to to the circle in roughly an hour, too.
Nope, that would be more like 4 hours, due to the shape of the country, and the smaller roads around.
Last time I want through Lux/Bel by car, I actually got flashed ... usually I use trains though.
Lux - Brussels is very slow by train, the line is in dire need of an upgrade!
In LUX: public transport is cost free, btw.
true. But in most cases slower than car (even though not as bad as Lux - Brussels).
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I went from Trier to Luxembourg, by train.
Brussels to Lux, is a pretty old train track. No idea if they ever planned to replace it.
Actually they should as there once was a continental wide program to do that, see Stuttgart 21 - lol.
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I think your view is jaded by the fact that we humans have developed the ability to travel really quickly. If you drive an hour in a straight line you do in fact cover quite a lot of ground. Regardless of how quickly you move 2500 sqkm is a shitload of land, and remember this isn't an attempt to build a new country (obvious jokes about China's land grab excepted of course). This is attempts to build infrastructure and minor developments on coastal cities.
To put it another way since this is related to citie
Confuzioius says: I'm confused (Score:2)
So, we gained some land?
The size of Luxembourg - the city?
Or the size of Luxembourg - the country?
I imagine around the world we gained 2mm coast line on average. Or is it only 1.5mm? So: what can it be sued for.
Ah, at some exceptional places they actually gained a soccer field: good for them.
Luxemwhat? (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea how large Luxembourg is.
Maybe if someone tells me how many Olympic sized pools this would fill?
--
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. - Bill Gates
Re: Luxemwhat? (Score:3)
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256 thousand bananas squared.
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I have no idea how large Luxembourg is.
Maybe if someone tells me how many Olympic sized pools this would fill?
We can only show you the door. You must walk through it. https://maps.google.com/ [google.com]
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Slightly smaller than Rhode Island; about half the size of Delaware [cia.gov].
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> I have no idea how large Luxembourg is.
About 1/8 of the area of Wales.
huh? (Score:3)
How big is a Luxembourg? It's a car, right? Even if it's a fancy big luxury model, that still seems like a terrible measure of land area.
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It's a really big car, big enough to have its own country code.
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As we have established elsewhere, facts are meaningless, what matters today is how something feels, and since we feel that "down south" is all those countries that we consider kinda backwards and retarded...
Re: Please help me with my geography (Score:2)
That struck me as odd, also.
Maybe the article was written by someone in Iceland?
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Well, Indonesia straddles the equator.
The southernmost bit of Hainan, China is north of 18 degrees north latitude; UAE is entirely north of the 22nd parallel (north). Neither off those countries are anywhere near the "global south".
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Or yeah, just as likely the author or editor is a dumbass.
Potato Potahto (Score:2)
You say land reclamation, I say aquatic habitat destruction...