Sea Level Changes and Tsunamis, Environmental Stress and Migration Overseas Print E-mail
Written by Nils-Axel Mörner   
Tuesday, 05 January 2010 09:53
Human migration in the past plays a key role for the spread of cultures across the Indian Ocean. The Maldives occupy an interesting position at the cross-route of ocean trading and exploratory expeditions. Natural phenomena like rapid changes in sea level and tsunami events may pose an extra stress on coastal habitation providing the ultimate push for a migration overseas. Records from Sri Lanka and the Maldives are analyzed in this paper. Recently, a new threat and stress factor for low-lying coastal areas has emerged in the global warming scenario predicting a general flooding due to a rapidly rising sea level. In this scenario, the Maldives would have become flooded in 50 to 100 years.

 

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 Human migration in the past plays a key role for the spread of cultures across the Indian Ocean. The Maldives occupy an interesting position at the cross-route of ocean trading and exploratory expeditions. Natural phenomena like rapid changes in sea level and tsunami events may pose an extra stress on coastal habitation providing the ultimate push for a migration overseas. Records from Sri Lanka and the Maldives are analyzed in this paper. Recently, a new threat and stress factor for low-lying coastal areas has emerged in the global warming scenario predicting a general flooding due to a rapidly rising sea level. In this scenario, the Maldives would have become flooded in 50 to 100 years.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 January 2010 20:20