Land Subsidence and Aquifer‐System Storage Loss in Central Mexico: A Quasi‐Continental Investigation With Sentinel‐1 InSAR

Abstract

Aquifers host 30% of global freshwaters (Shiklomanov, 1993), and play an important role in addressing water needs worldwide, especially in countries with extensive arid regions (United Nations, 2022). In Mexico, 39.5% of the consumed water is supplied through ∼35,300 hm 3 /year groundwater, extracted from ∼300,000 wells and used for agriculture (71%), public supply (21%), industry and electric energy (excluding hydroelectric) (8%) (CONAGUA, 2022b). Although Mexico is not considered "water-poor", large discrepancies in recharge and consumption rates and patterns exist: only 20% of the total annual rainfall occurs where 76% population lives and 90% irrigated lands are maintained (Hernandez, 2003). In 2020, the National Waters Commission (CONAGUA) identified 157 overexploited aquifers near densely populated cities and large farmlands, and 48 threatened by salinization and/or marine intrusion (CONAGUA, 2022b). Land subsidence resulting from groundwater overexploitation has also been documented in major cities of Central Mexico (Cabral-Cano et al., 2008;Carreon-Freyre et al., 2011). Topographic lowering, tilting and deformation, apparent uplifting of deeply founded structures, surface cracking and faulting are very common impacts that aquifer-system compaction causes on Mexican urban landscapes (Carreón Freyre, 2010;Figueroa-Miranda et al., 2018), and in many other countries (Galloway &

Groundwater Volume Loss in Mexico City Constrained by InSAR and GRACE Observations and Mechanical Models

“…Alternatively, one can assume an evenly distributed groundwater mass loss over the two mascons and estimate groundwater loss proportionally for a smaller CDMX area, resulting in a loss of 0.85 km 3 /yr. The first assumption is consistent with results from Cigna and Tapete (2022), who show that Mexico City is the major subsiding zone in central Mexico. Thus, we consider 0.85 and 3.87 km 3 /yr as the lower and upper bound estimates for the groundwater loss in the CDMX.…”

“…This conclusion is at odds with the interpretations made by Chaussard et al. (2021), but consistent with results from Cigna & Tapete (2022).…”

“…Comparing the VLM-rate against GNSS observations (Figure 2d) yields a robust agreement between the two datasets with a standard deviation of 0.32 cm/yr for their differences. The uplift rate has not been reported before (Castellazzi et al, 2016;Chaussard et al, 2014Chaussard et al, , 2021Cigna & Tapete, 2022), likely because previous studies chose their reference point of zero LOS-displacements next to the subsidence zone within the uplift area. Our examination of nearby volcanic systems rules out the possibility that the uplift signal is associated with any apparent volcanic activities (Figure S7 in Supporting Information S1).…”

“…Land subsidence due to groundwater extraction has been observed in major cities worldwide, such as Mexico City (Cigna & Tapete, 2022), Jakarta (Wu et al., 2022), Mashhad (Khorrami et al., 2020), Lagos (Ohenhen & Shirzaei, 2022), and Southwest USA (Khorrami, Alizadeh, et al., 2019; Ojha et al., 2020). Groundwater withdrawal can generate a poroelastic deformation response by reducing pore‐pressure within the aquifer unit, causing the closure of pore‐spaces under overburden pressure, manifested in subsidence (Galloway & Burbey, 2011).…”

Spatiotemporal Evolution of Ground Subsidence and Extensional Basin Bedrock Organization: An Application of Multitemporal Multi-Satellite SAR Interferometry

“…Indeed, when groundwater migrates from aquifers, the pressure of the water pore decreases, therefore the effective stress in the soils and rocks increases, inducing gradual land subsidence as a consequence of the consolidation of the aquifers [9]. Using MInSAR techniques were observed phenomena of surface ground subsidence correlated to the compaction of sediments such as London [10], Shanghai [11], Mexico City and other cities of Central Mexico [12][13][14]. In Italy, some areas are interested in ground subsidence such as Roma [15], Bologna town and surroundings [16], the Ravenna coastal plain [17] or the Italian coastlines [18], the whole Po river delta [19], the Venezia lagoon [20], the Arno river basin [21], the Gioia Tauro [22] and Sibari coastal plains [23].…”