This article includes information about the impact of climate change on coastal cities.
Read about human impacts that are causing cities around the world to sink.
Watch videos explaining how climate change and subsidence have caused places around the world to sink.
Watch videos to gain insight about the impact on communities living in these sinking cities.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This article provides easy-to-read information about the causes of sinking cities.
Students will gain insight into how climate change and sinking cities affect people in different parts of the world.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have prior knowledge of plate tectonics, subsidence, and climate change.
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Differentiation
The article and videos can be used as a starting point for students to critically think about the human impacts of climate change in various locations around the world.
Students could research or design solutions for adapting to higher sea levels and stopping climate change.
Scientist Notes
Sinking cities is mainly caused by tectonic movements and subsidence. Also, warming seas cause sea levels to rise and coastal settlements to sink. This resource narrows down the impact of climate change on coastal cities. Students can explore the resource to gain insights into these interactions. The resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.12.3-5 Explain how natural and human-made catastrophic events in one place affect people living in other places.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.6.6-8 Draw on multiple disciplinary lenses to analyze how a specific problem can manifest itself at local, regional, and global levels over time, identifying its characteristics and causes, and the challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address the problem.
D4.8.6-8 Apply a range of deliberative and democratic procedures to make decisions and take action in their classrooms and schools, and in out-of-school civic contexts.
