More than two-thirds of the world’s 33 major deltas are sinking and the vast majority of those have experienced flooding in recent years, primarily a result of human activity, a new study has found.
From the Yellow River in China to the Mississippi River in US, researchers are racing to better understand and mitigate the degradation of some of the world’s most important river deltas, according to Professor James Syvitski from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Researchers found that over two-thirds of the the world’s 33 major deltas are sinking and the vast majority of those have experienced flooding in recent years, primarily a result of human activity. Some 500 million people live on river deltas around the world, a number that continues to climb as the population increases, they said.