The effects of land subsidence could be devastating on heavily settled coastal plains. In a scenario of sea-level rise, high costs are expected to protect coastal cities and touristic hotspots and to keep drained reclaimed lands. In this work, we calculated subsidence rates (SR) in the Po coastal plain, over the last 5.6 and 120 thousand years, providing information about land movements before human intervention became the main driver of subsidence, through water and gas withdrawal.

Ongoing subsidence is a complex problem for the Netherlands. Old strategies for coping have limits. In the Dutch National Scientific Research Program on Land Subsidence (2020–2025), we will develop an integrative approach to achieve feasible, legitimate and sustainable solutions for managing the negative societal effects of land subsidence, connecting fundamental research on subsidence processes to socio-economic impact of subsidence and to governance and legal framework design.

This paper analyses whether and to what extent public decision-making, which controls land subsidence due to groundwater table lowering and its societal impacts, is organised effectively to reduce these societal impacts, and how the legal framework can be improved to achieve that.

For many subsiding coastal areas, solutions to subsidence are readily available, but difficult to implement. To facilitate decision making and implementation of measures to subsidence, a sound and shared knowlegde base is required. But how to start creating such a knowledge base? This paper presents a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to address land subsidence, illustrated by best practise examples from around the world. This 6M approach will contribute to lowering the threshold to act.

The potential for subsidence of Holocene deltas due to peat compaction is mainly determined by the 3D distribution of different lithologies, and associated geotechnical properties, in the subsurface. Our study shows that sequences containing thick high-organic peat layers with no or a thin clastic overburden have the highest potential for high amounts of subsidence due to compaction. In addition, peat layers above groundwater level have high potential for subsidence due oxidation and compaction.