Over the past few decades, enviornmentalists and scientists have warned that climate change-induced rising sea levels will eventually render certain islands unlivable, returning the land to the sea from whence it came. The Maldives, a nation comprised of islands and atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, has been cited as one of the places to watch this alleged phenomenon take shape.
A new study, however, has revealed that while some islands in the Maldives have lost ground, just as many remained stable, and some even grew in size. The findings have led scientists to converge on the country to dig deeper and find out what's driving the disparity.
As the New York Times reports, while nearly 42 percent of the islands did lose area, 39 percent remained stable, though some did shift and change in shape. A further 20 percent of the islands gained size.
According to the outlet, in the early 2000s scientists Arthur Webb and Paul Kench amassed a collection of aerial photographs of islands in the Pacific Ocean taken during the mid-1900s then compared them with modern satellite images. Their findings, published in 2010, showed that while the seas had risen nearly an inch every decade, not all islands responded similarly.
Since then, a number of similar studies have taken place, including recently in the Maldives, whose location led many to believe it would be among the first to suffer from rising seas. In the south of the country, there is a collection of 241 islands known as the Huvadhoo Atoll. Researchers compared images of 184 of those islands in the same way Webb and Kench had earlier and found similar results.
