More people live close to a sea coast than earlier estimated, according to a new study. It was stated that these people are the most vulnerable to the rise of the sea level as well as to the increased number of floods and intensified storms. By using recent increased resolution datasets, Finnish university researchers estimate that 1.9 billion inhabitants, or 28 percent of the world’s total population, live closer than 100 km from the coast in areas less than 100 meters above the present sea level. By 2050 the amount of people in that zone is predicted to increase to 2.4 billion, while population living lower than 5 meters will reach 500 million people. Assistant Professor Matti Kummu from Aalto University says that many of these people need to adapt their livelihoods to changing climate.
Rising sea level threatens larger number of people that earlier estimated. Shanghai, with more than 24 million inhabitants, is one of the megacities that will suffer from the projected sea level rise and intensified storms. The study found that while population and wealth concentrate by the sea, food must be grown farther and farther away from where people live. Highlands and mountain areas are increasingly important from a food-production point of view, but also very vulnerable to changes in climate. In the past century there has been a clear tendency that cropland and pasture areas have grown most in areas outside the population hotspots, and decreased in coastal areas. This will most probably only continue in the future, summarizes Professor Olli Varis from Aalto University.
The study reveals that even though people and wealth continue to accumulate in coastal proximity, their growth is even faster in inland and mountainous areas. This contradicts the existing studies. In the future, the world will be less diverse in terms of urbanization and economic output, when assessing it from geospatial point of view. For the analysis, researchers used several global gridded datasets. They first created a geographic zoning in relation to the elevation and proximity to coast. This was then used to study the factors included in the study, which were grouped into five clusters: climate, population, agriculture, economy, and impact on environment. For the factors with temporal extent, the researchers also assessed their development over the time period of 1900-2050.
Source: Claims Journal
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