Larissa’s ups and downs

Thanks to Europe’s environmental Copernicus programme and the Sentinel-1 mission, the first Europe-wide subsidence and soil movement analysis service is available to the public. Based on radar data from Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission, the European Ground Motion Service provides information on the motion of land, structures and infrastructure in Copernicus Participating States. The service gives users reliable information on ground motion at a local, regional or national scale.

For example, this image shows the rate of ground displacement between 2015 and 2020 in and around Larissa, the capital of the Thessaly region in Greece. While the southern outskirts of Larissa experience some uplift, the village of Chalki to the southeast subsided by an average of 40 mm a year, largely as a result of groundwater extraction. Ampelonas to the northwest also experienced subsidence.

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