Sinking Cities Across America

This repository contains code in R to replicate the following graphic:

Source

• Title: Across America, Big Cities Are Sinking. Here’s Why

• Author(s): Mira Rojanasakul

• Date: May 8, 2025

• From: New York Times

• URL: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/08/climate/sinking-cities-us-causes-groundwater.html

• PDF: Sinking-Cities-US-Causes-Groundwater-NYT.pdf

Data

Data from Nature paper: Land subsidence risk to infrastructure in US metropolises, by Ohenhen et al (May 8, 2025)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-025-00240-y#MOESM4

Refer to the section data (in the above paper) for figures 1-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-025-00240-y#Sec15.

The URL to download the Excel file is:

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs44284-025-00240-y/MediaObjects/44284_2025_240_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx

In addition to the above Excel file, we curated a CSV file land-subsidence-risk-data1.csv that also contains coordinates (longitude and latitude) of the cities, and whether they are sinking or not.