Earth Sinks Three Inches Under Weight Of Flooded Amazon

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October 04, 2005




As the Amazon River floods every year, a sizeable portion of South America sinks several inches because of the extra weight – and then rises again as the waters recede, a study has found.

This annual rise and fall of earth's crust is the largest ever detected, and it may one day help scientists tally the total amount of water on Earth.

“What would you do if you knew how much water was on the planet?” asked Douglas Alsdorf, assistant professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University. “That's a really exciting question, because nobody knows for sure how much water there is.”

Having an estimate of Earth's entire fresh water cache – from hidden groundwater, to the world's rivers and wetlands, to mountaintop glaciers – would greatly improve our ability to predict drought, flooding and climate change.

The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

http://www.physorg.com/news6969.html