Geomaticians

City Sprawl Responsible For Acceleration Of Deep Landslide Movement, Finds Study

City Sprawl Responsible For Acceleration Of Deep Landslide Movement, Finds Study
An international team of researchers has found that an acceleration in movement of a deep landslide beneath the city of Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is due to city sprawl, not natural forces. In their study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the group analyzed satellite imagery and aerial photographs of the city taken over many years to learn more about the movement of the land beneath the city. To learn more about the landslide, the researchers gathered satellite imagery for the years 2015 to 2019 and photographs of the area where the land is moving taken over the past 70 years from airplanes. In measuring the amount of movement over time, they found that some parts of the city (which has quadrupled in population since 1995) are moving faster than others, and that many areas are moving much faster than they did a half-century ago—up to three times faster. They also found that the sections of ground moving the fastest are those that are the most urbanized.