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Assessment of the regional subsidence in the lacustrine zone of Mexico City using a geostatistical model

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Abstract

In the last 100 years, the overexploitation of the groundwater resources underlying the lacustrine deposits of Mexico City has trigged regional subsidence that manifests itself through the sinking of the ground surface, damaging infrastructure and public services. In this work, geostatistical tools are used to analyze and assess the evolution of this phenomenon in the city, by considering space–time data from surface benchmarks located in the lacustrine zone. The database is composed of 206 spatial features and 12-time points, for a total of 24 years of monitoring between 1983 and 2007. Here a full grid space–time layout (STF) of the R spacetime package was used, and since this phenomenon is not a stationary process as it presents a trend over time, the spatiotemporal variogram was determined from the stochastic residual function of the process. Marginal and pooled variograms were also determined as initial values to fit the variograms models using the R gstat package. Results show that the separable variogram model was the one that best represented the spatial and temporal correlation of the phenomenon in the area of study. Using this geostatistical model, ground elevations and subsidence rates were predicted in the benchmarks locations for the period 2010–2030. The validation process consisted of comparing direct measurements made in 2016 and the ones obtained from the model for the same year. For the year 2030, the maximum cumulative subsidence value was 13 m, and the highest mean rate was 25.06 cm/year near the Mexico City International Airport.

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modified from Pebesma 2012)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico

    M. C. Madrigal & E. Botero

  2. Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico

    C. Díaz-Ávalos

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  1. M. C. Madrigal
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  2. E. Botero
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  3. C. Díaz-Ávalos
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Correspondence to E. Botero.

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Madrigal, M.C., Botero, E. & Díaz-Ávalos, C. Assessment of the regional subsidence in the lacustrine zone of Mexico City using a geostatistical model. Environ Earth Sci 81, 381 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10492-9

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