The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic

[rangerrebew]

The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic
Reports of these ground-chasms have been swelling in the past few years. Geology helps explain why
 
By Chris Bodenner
 
May 24, 2018
 

There are many good reasons why The Villages is known as “Disney for Seniors.”
 

The largest retirement community in the world, The Villages is also one of America’s safest and most leisurely places to live. Sumter County, populated almost entirely by Villagers, is 62nd among 67 counties in Florida for violent crime—likely because the median age is 66.6, the oldest of any U.S. county. The ubiquity of gates, guard booths and mandatory visitor I.D. cards lends to the low crime. Vehicular deaths are very low, which makes sense given that Villagers commute in golf carts more than cars. The Villages is also located in the safest area of Florida for hurricanes.

But Villagers are increasingly fearful of a growing, surreal threat: the ground suddenly opening up and swallowing them whole.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind-floridas-sinkhole-epidemic-180969158/#XmpR2etDxo08EEka.99
 

[Joe Wooten]

And they just HAD to throw "human -caused climate change" into the article.....

[GtHawk]

The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic
Reports of these ground-chasms have been swelling in the past few years. Geology helps explain why
 
By Chris Bodenner
 
May 24, 2018







 

There are many good reasons why The Villages is known as “Disney for Seniors.”
 

The largest retirement community in the world, The Villages is also one of America’s safest and most leisurely places to live. Sumter County, populated almost entirely by Villagers, is 62nd among 67 counties in Florida for violent crime—likely because the median age is 66.6, the oldest of any U.S. county. The ubiquity of gates, guard booths and mandatory visitor I.D. cards lends to the low crime. Vehicular deaths are very low, which makes sense given that Villagers commute in golf carts more than cars. The Villages is also located in the safest area of Florida for hurricanes.

But Villagers are increasingly fearful of a growing, surreal threat: the ground suddenly opening up and swallowing them whole.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind-floridas-sinkhole-epidemic-180969158/#XmpR2etDxo08EEka.99

Funny, I thought I had read about the reasons for the sinkholes years ago and one of the biggest ones was just like for California where huge areas of land were subsiding .......... ground water depletion. So I guess in a sense it can be blamed on man, but no not man made climate change.

[Suppressed]

Funny, I thought I had read about the reasons for the sinkholes years ago and one of the biggest ones was just like for California where huge areas of land were subsiding .......... ground water depletion. So I guess in a sense it can be blamed on man, but no not man made climate change.

Yes, @GtHawk, it's groundwater mining (withdrawing faster than it can be recharged, is what precipitates most.

[MajorClay]

Geology is the science.