Subsidence Susceptibility Map for the Conterminous U.S.

Sinkholes present hazards to humans due to subsidence and by focusing contaminated surface water runoff into groundwater. Sinkholes create instability in the foundations of buildings, roads and other infrastructure, resulting in damage and in some cases loss of life, but may also play an important role as vernal pools in some ecosystems. This project created a prototype nationwide subsidence susceptibility map using established USGS research, existing USGS authoritative data (National Elevation Dataset, National Hydrography Dataset), and innovative processing techniques using the USGS Yeti supercomputer. By creating both a national polygon dataset of closed features and a heatmap of regions characterized by dense clustering of sinkholes [...]