NISAR Maps Mexico City Subsidence of More Than 2 Centimeters
Mexico City is sinking by more than 2 centimeters a month in parts of the capital and its outskirts, according to preliminary NISAR measurements taken between October 2025 and January 2026. The satellite mapped the ground moving beneath a city of some 20 million people, adding fresh detail to a problem that has damaged roads, buildings and water lines for decades.
Craig Ferguson, deputy project manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said, “Images like this confirm that NISAR's measurements align with expectations.” David Bekaert, project manager at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research and a member of the NISAR science team, said, “Mexico City is a well-known hot spot when it comes to subsidence, and images like this are just the beginning for NISAR.”
Dry-season measurements in Mexico City
The analysis is based on measurements taken during Mexico City's dry season, from October 2025 to January 2026. NISAR launched in July 2025 and uses L-band synthetic aperture radar to track subtle motions such as land sinking and rising, glaciers sliding, and croplands growing.
Ferguson said NISAR's “long wavelength L-band radar will make it possible to detect and track land subsidence in more challenging and densely vegetated regions such as coastal communities where they may have the compounding effects of both land subsidence and sea level rise.”
A century of sinking land
The new readings fit a long pattern in Mexico City. An engineer first documented the subsidence issue in 1925, and by the 1990s and 2000s parts of the metropolitan area were sinking by around 14 inches, or 35 centimeters, per year. The Mexico City area is built atop an aquifer, and extensive groundwater pumping and the weight of urban development have compacted the ancient lakebed beneath the city for more than a century.
That movement has already damaged the Metro and has left visible marks at the Angel of Independence, which was built in 1910 to commemorate 100 years of Mexico's independence. Fourteen steps have been added to the base of the 114-foot, or 36-meter, monument as the land around it gradually sinks.
What NISAR saw near the capital
In the satellite image, Benito Juarez International Airport sits near the center, and Lake Nabor Carrillo appears as a dark green oblong to the northeast. The preliminary map shows parts of Mexico City and its environs subsiding by more than half an inch, or more than 2 centimeters, per month, a rate that can change how quickly engineers spot trouble in roads, buildings and water lines.
Bekaert said, “We're going to see an influx of new discoveries from all over the world, given the unique sensing capabilities of NISAR and its consistent global coverage.” The next step is more NISAR data, which should sharpen the yellow and red areas in the analysis as the satellite keeps collecting measurements over Mexico City and other regions where land movement is harder to track from the ground.
