Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

Worth adding some context to this study. We've known about subsidence in our area for many many years. The Houston-Galveston subsidence district was created almost 50 years ago by the Texas legislature to regulate groundwater withdrawal and manage subsidence. https://hgsubsidence.org/ It's worth noting that this regulation has drastically slowed subsidence, but not completely halted due to the groundwater problem, and an exploding population.

One of the top priorities of the subsidence district is getting the area onto surface water. That is, 60% reduction of groundwater usage by 2025, and 80% reduction by 2035. There's quite a few huge projects underway at the moment, including a multi-billion dollar expansion of our surface water treatment: https://www.nhcrwa.com/projects/northeast-water-purification...

USGS has a network of sensors that you use to see subsidence here: https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e5c75a...

Of note is Katy's subsidence, which I believe is from hydrocarbon withdrawals.

I believe what this study does that's new is analyze Sentinel-1A data and correlate it to hotspots in the Houston area, which is actually super cool.

Thanks for the arcgis link. It is interesting to compare to the Sentinel 1A data from the study[0]. For example there is one existing (ground based) measurement East of Mont Belvieu (P050), but most of the displacement in the satellite data appears just to the West, centered on Mont Belvieu. This is by eye only, so I may be mistaken in comparing the locations.

The ground based measurement for sensor P050 reports up-down displacement of -0.07 cm per year between 2017 and 2020.

It is difficult to determine the exact value from a shaded image, but the satellite data show that just to the West of this ground based measurement (about centered on Mont Belvieu), displacement was -1.91 to -0.85 cm per year between 2016 and 2020 (see figure 3b).

The arcgis site has useful data that could be used better compare trends for the same dates [1]. I did not look at every year, but it looks like 50+ ground based measurements per year. The study's methods are a bit beyond me, but section 3 describes processing a total of 89 Single Look Complex (SLC) images from 2016 to 2020. I could not find any mention of exact dates.

[0] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/15/3831# [1] https://hgsubsidence.org/GPS/2021/P050_HRF20_neu_cm.col

San Jose CA also suffers from subsidence as a result of water withdrawal[1]. There is also a seasonal aspect to it.

[1]http://explore.museumca.org/creeks/z-subsidence.html

Thanks for the info. One of the reasons I like to read comments first before the article

> hydrocarbon withdrawals

i don't understand what you're trying to say?

It's Texas, where oil industry runs everything.

meh only sorta. like, yeah oil is obviously a big deal because it's a valuable resource. but like if something is a huge part of the state's economy and a ton of jobs is working to keep that industry healthy/growing really "being run by it" or is it just good policy?

the good thing is we're stealing all those nice cali tech jobs so it won't be true forever ;)

yeah, cool story bro, you mean like the sweet gig at Oracle (who can't recruit in the Bay Area) that will pay you enough to buy an electric generator and a flight for your daughter to get birth control?

cool

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. It's nasty, tedious, and just what we're trying to avoid here.

We've had to ask you this more than once before. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. It's nasty, tedious, and just what we're trying to avoid here.

We've had to ask you this more than once before. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments and particularly please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It’s a blatant euphemism that anyone not invested in the oil industry wouldn’t use.

nah, its just thay saying "oil" is too narrow because a huge amount of the extraction is also natural gas. Hydrocarbon is both very clear and accurately specific.

Oil and gas would be clearer and less ambiguous. Using jargon / euphemism is poor communication.

Oil

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