Geophysicists have described a catastrophe that could overtake more than 500 million people currently living in river delta areas. Research on this has been published in Science Advances.
Scientists have simulated a flood in a laboratory that can occur in the context of global warming and flood huge habitable areas. Real-world testing would be impossible due to the scale of the phenomenon.
Meanwhile, scientists, based on the idea of hydrodynamic similarity, modeled the flood in the river delta and studied the mechanism of its course. According to geophysicists, this could help reduce damage from natural disasters and save millions of lives.
Image: Ganti et al. Sci. Adv. 2016; 2: e1501768
River deltas are being destroyed by rising sea levels, ocean storms, landscape subsidence and human interference. These events lead to the restructuring of alluvium (clastic bottom sediments from boulders and pebbles): their transfer to the shore or to the sea.
The main conclusion of the study carried out by the scientists is that the processes occurring in a strictly defined place (marked in the image) of the river delta play a key role in the alluvium restructuring. This explains the size of deltas and the mechanism of their occurrence.