{"id":13307,"date":"2024-12-26T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=13307"},"modified":"2024-12-13T06:59:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T06:59:41","slug":"global-coastal-population-growth-sea-level-risks-urbanization-december-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/global-coastal-population-growth-sea-level-risks-urbanization-december-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"15% of global population lives within a few miles of a coast \u2212 and the number is growing rapidly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Large parts of Mumbai face increasing flood risks from storms and sea-level rise.\n AP Photo\/Rafiq Maqbool<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n Arthur Cosby<\/a>, Mississippi State University<\/a><\/em> and Viswadeep Lebakula<\/a>, Oak Ridge National Laboratory<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Coastal populations are expanding quickly around the world. The rise is evident in burgeoning waterfront cities and in the increasing damage from powerful storms and rising sea levels. Yet, reliable, detailed data on the scale of that population change has been hard to pin down, until now.<\/p>\n\n

We study human geography as a sociologist at Mississippi State University<\/a> and a computer scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory<\/a>. Using newly available<\/a> data from Oak Ridge<\/a> that combines census results, satellite images and data science techniques, we were able to track growth patterns of coastal populations around the world.<\/p>\n\n

The results show a striking pattern<\/a>: The largest number of people by far \u2013 about 10% of the global population \u2013 live within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of the coast, and another 5% of the world\u2019s people live between 5 and 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the coast. In the rings beyond 10 kilometers, the population declines swiftly.<\/p>\n\n

That\u2019s a lot of people<\/h2>\n\n

The United Nations estimates that Earth\u2019s population passed 8 billion people<\/a> in 2022, an increase of 1 billion in just over a decade. <\/p>\n\n

We found that over 2 billion of those people \u2013 29% of the total global population \u2013 lived within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of shore<\/a> in 2018, based on Oak Ridge Laboratory\u2019s publicly available dataset. About half of those inhabitants \u2013 over 1 billion people, or about 15% of the global population \u2013 lived within 10 kilometers of the water. <\/p>\n\n