Border disputes notwithstanding, which countries are the fastest growing/shrinking in dry land area? This can be either due to natural tectonic activity, or man-made landfills and lakes.
Iceland certainly claims to be the fastest growing, due to tectonic activity - it’s placed squarely over the mid-Atlantic ridge.
The coast of Finland is raising due to post-glacial rebound, upto 9mm per year. This is said to give Finland yearly area increase of 7 km2. (Source: Finnish Institute of Marine REsearch)
Small states along sea shores are very active in land reclamation as a result of necessity, and many of these countries are rich enough to afford that - Monaco, Hong Kong, Macao (the former ones being autonomous Special Administrative Zones within China) and Singapore come to mind. Monaco, for example, has recently finsihed the Fontviellie project, covering 0.33 square kilometers of reclaimed space that was added to the country’s territory of approximately 1.95 square kilometers. I didn’t find a map online, but I have a map of Monaco in my 2000 World Almanac showing land reclamation projects before and since 1950. It seems as if a large portion of Monaco’s territory was won that way.
Macao is planning to reclaim the entire are between the islands of Coloane and Taipa, as illustrated on this German map, which would significantly increase the dry territory of Macao.
A number of Pacific islands are set to disappear when global warming will drown them below rising seas.
During the 2004 tsunami, almost the entirety of the Maldives was temporarily underwater. The highest point on this Indian Ocean islands nation is only 7 1/2 feet above sea level, and rising sea levels due to global warming is a major concern.
Cite?
In fact, sea levels at most low-lying Pacific island sites have been measured to be stable or actually falling.
Pacific island nations are indeed worries about global warming, and they have reason to be. Tuvalu, for example, is supporting global campaigns that aim at increasing awareness of the the greenhouse effect with parts of the money they made by marketing their national internet top level domain, .tv. Cite, and in case you don’t like that source (it’s a somewhat left wing indy news site), cite (The Guardian) and cite (BBC).
Dubai (part of the UAE) could be a temporary contender for fastest-growing at the moment, with the construction of the huge artificial islands of the Palms and The World.
The Palm islands alone will increase Dubai’s shoreline by 520km when complete, but I can’t find an accurate cite for actual land area increase.
Dubai actually has 5 large reclamation projects:
- The Palm, Deira
- The World
- The Palm, Jumeirah
- The Palm, Jebel Ali
- Dubai Waterfront
The image on this page shows what the plans are about.
Dubai aside, a few other emirates also have similar plans, but they’re not nearly as far advanced as Dubai’s.
The current rate appears to be almost 2mm a year, or 15 or so years to raise the sea level one single inch.
That rate is disputed and unclear:
http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=ENV&recid=3698154&q=global+warming+ocean+level&uid=786768182&setcookie=yes
Global mean sea level is a potentially sensitive indicator of climate change. Global warming will contribute to worldwide sea-level rise (SLR) from thermal expansion of ocean water, melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets. A number of studies, mostly using tide-gauge data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, Bidston Observatory, England, have obtained rates of global SLR within the last 100 years that range between 0.3 and 3mm/yr, with most values concentrated between 1 and 2 mm/yr. However, the reliability of these results has been questioned because of problems with data quality and physical processes that introduce a high level of spatial and temporal variability. Sources of uncertainty in the sea-level data include variations in winds, ocean currents, river runoff, vertical earth movements, and geographically uneven distribution of long-term records. Crustal motions introduce a major source of error. … … Furthermore, not all climate models are in agreement. Opposite conclusions may be drawn from the results of other GCMs. In addition, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is potentially subject to dynamic and volcanic instabilities that are difficult to predict. Because of the great uncertainty in SLR projections, careful monitoring of future sea-level trends by upgraded tide-gauge networks and satellite geodesy will become essential. Finally, because of the high spatial variability in crustal subsidence rates, wave climates and tidal regimes, it will be the set of local conditions (especially the relative sea-level rise), rather than a single global mean sea-level trend, that will determine each locality’s vulnerability to future SLR. "
So, if the rate is 0.3mm/year, it’d take nearly 100 years to raise one inch. At the highest current estimate, it’d take 8 years to increase one inch.
Thus sites like this:
http://www.solcomhouse.com/globalwarming.htm
with quotes like “A 1M (3 feet) sea-level rise would affect 6 million people in Egypt, with 12% to 15% of agricultural land lost, 13 million in Bangladesh, with 16% of national rice production lost, and 72 million in China and “tens of thousands” of hectares(1 hectare =2.47 acres) of agricultural land. This is based on new information released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…Small, low-lying island states and countries with big coastal populations such as the Marshall Islands and Bangladesh could see catastrophic damage from the rise.” are talking about a *36" increase in sea level, * which at the current rates would take anywhere from 300 years to 3600 years . :dubious: In other words- complete alarmist bullshit.
Not that I am saying global warming is BS, or that there aren’t legit concerns about sea level increases, but dire warnings of a yard increase are crap.
Umm… the Guardian is very left wing, and the BBC has its own biases.