Creating Land Artificially From The Sea
The World’s Disappearing Land
Land reclamation, usually known as land fill, is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or land fill. Land that you can walk on, drive on and build on.
All around the world, cities are edging further into the sea. Plans are afoot to build huge islands and giant constructions in coastal areas, featuring the dredging and dumping of million of tonnes of material. Cities have been creeping further into the ocean. Land reclamation is big business and today, numerous countries are ‘taking back’ land from the sea to expand their coastlines and territory.
Almost every coastal province in China has projects underway to build out the coastline, either by dumping soil from the mainland, dredging it up from further out to sea, or by blocking river waterway and allowing the silt to build up.
The island-state of Singapore has added 22% onto its size over the past 50 years by building out into the surrounding waters using sand, earth and rock quarried and purchased from elsewhere. Their passion for reclamation is such that they are the world’s largest importer of sand.
But it is Dubai that is home to perhaps the most famous of reclaimed areas. Its visually spectacular and entirely artificial Palm Jumeirah archipelago is built from an estimated 110 million cubic metres of dredged sand.
And as one of the most densely populated nations on Earth, the low-lying Netherlands has long been driven to reclaim large belt of its coastal swamps to house its ever-growing population.
Although developments are spreading out into the oceans, the reality is that urban sprawl is no longer just a land-based problem, and this causes havoc for marine organisms and their habitats, destroying the coral reefs that nourish fisheries and destablising many precious coastal ecosystems including protection of the coastline from the harsher impact of the waves.
Building on dredged sediments also has risks for inhabitants, as this strata isn’t as stable as hard bedrock on land. There have been reports that Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah archipelago is actually sinking. Reclaimed land is also a risk in earthquake-prone areas.
But reclaiming land from the ocean has its limits, particularly in an age of a warming planet. Scientists warn that by 2100, sea levels may rise by as much as six feet, and furious storms will pound our coasts. All over the world, the governments of small islands are working to respond to these hazards. In humanity’s battle to save itself from a harsher climate, these diminutive islands find themselves on the front lines. But how they fends off the ocean will be of deep interest to many other populous and productive cities near the water: New York, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Guangzhou, all miniature commercial hubs.
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The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The deep waters of these oceans hide from view rugged mountains, vast plateaus, active volcanoes, and seemingly bottomless trenches. These underwater landscapes are in an endless cycle of construction and destruction as new crust is born along mid-ocean ridges, pushing old crust into the depths.
The ocean is just as important to forming land as the life that inhabits it. The ocean has the power to build, shape, and break down the land, forming the earth as we know it today. It is the interaction between the ocean, also called the hydrosphere, and the land, known as the geosphere, that causes these changes on the earth. The ocean wears down rock and land with waves, currents, erosion, and tectonic activity. It can also build up rock and land with waves, currents, deposits, volcanic activity, and tectonic activity.
An island is a body of land surrounded by water. Continents are also surrounded by water, but because they are so big, they are not considered islands. There are countless islands in the ocean, lakes, and rivers around the world.
Island Formation — There are six major kinds of islands: continental (1), tidal (2), barrier (3), oceanic (4), coral (5), and artificial (6).
Oceanic Islands, also known as volcanic islands, are formed by eruptions of volcanoes on the ocean floor. As volcanoes erupt, they build up layers of lava that may eventually break the water’s surface. When the tops of the volcanoes appear above the water, an island is formed, while the volcano is still beneath the ocean surface.
Oceanic islands can form from different types of volcanoes. One type forms in subduction zones, where one tectonic plate is shifting under another. Another type of oceanic island forms as a continent shifts over a “hot spot.” Over millions of years, a single hot spot formed the islands of the U.S. state of Hawaii.
A Volcano is produced over thousands of years as heat and pressure build up, and this heat and pressure work to make volcanoes erupt flowing lava. Volcanologists can predict eruptions — if they have a thorough understanding of a volcano’s eruptive history, if they can install the proper instrumentation on a volcano well in advance of an eruption, and if they can continuously monitor and adequately interpret data coming from that equipment.
If volcanologists can locate potential volcanic sites in the ocean that are due for eruption and If we can trigger volcanic eruptions by sending sophisticated Ocean-Robots submersible into a volcano and using Advanced Instrumentation( installed on a volcano), Artificial Intelligence, Supercomputers, etc ( for releasing the pressure in the volcano or unblocking the magma from reaching the surface ) then we will be able to create artificial islands in the sea which could address the issues related to Global Warming, Climate Change, Populous Nations, etc.
Artificial Islands are made by people. Artificial islands are created in different ways for different purposes.
Artificial islands can expand part of an already-existing island by draining the water around it. This creates more arable land for development or agriculture. The Nahua people of 14th-century Mexico created their capital, Tenochtitlan, from an artificial island in Lake Texcoco. They expanded an island in the swampy lake and connected it to the mainland through roads.
Artificial islands can also be created from material brought in from elsewhere. In Dubai, companies dig (dredge) sand from the Persian Gulf and spray it near shore. Dubai’s huge artificial islands are shaped like palm trees and a map of the world. A new island complex, the Dubai Waterfront, will be the largest man-made development in the world.
As more and more nations are extending their borders by expanding into the sea but the problems with Increased sea levels, Climate change, Tsunami, Earthquakes, etc still remains as threat. However, creating land artificially in the sea by means of Sand Filling/ Reclamation, Dredging, and Triggering Volcanic Eruptions may address problems related to Global Warming, Soil Erosion, Populous Settlement, etc but we may have to explore, in the future, other methods of creating Land Mass in our vast oceans which could only help us to sustain our needs of population growth and to address endless threat of climate change on Earth.
