Brazilian NavySoure Lighthouse, in the northeast of the archipelago: the sea was 3 meters above the current level 10,000 years agoBrazilian Navy
The flat island of Marajó in Pará, almost half the size of Ireland, proved highly sensitive to rising sea levels in a survey by scientists from the federal universities of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Viçosa (UFV), and Pará (UFPA). If the sea rises 2 meters (m) by the end of the century—a projection considered alarming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—it could flood many of the municipalities in the east, such as Cachoeira do Arari, which currently has 23,000 residents, and Soure, with 25,000. Some 500,000 people live in the island’s 18 municipalities. By examining differences in the color and chemical composition of soils on Marajó, one of the researchers involved in the study, UFMG geographer Renata Jordan Henriques, found signs of the advancing sea that 10,000 years ago might have been 3 m above the current level. “The beaches on the south of the island have undergone intense marine erosion over the last 40 years, indicating sea levels are rising in the region,” he notes.
Republish
