"Inside a shed in the middle of a grassy field last week, workers hammered away at a steel rod sticking out of a hole bored into the ground.

The device, called an extensometer, doesn’t look like much on land. But once installed, it will extend just over 1,400 feet underground, from this shed in the town of West Point to the bottom of the Potomac aquifer, the source of eastern Virginia’s groundwater.

With this huge rod, scientists can measure something tiny: “sub-millimeter changes of motion,” said Greg Connock, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Virginia.

In other words: sinking land.

Called land subsidence, the process has been happening in Hampton Roads for thousands of years in response to natural geological forces. But it’s been accelerated by humans’ withdrawal of groundwater, and is a key factor in our region’s high rate of sea level rise and flooding.

The sinking may sound slow, but it’s happening more quickly here than most other places on the East Coast. . ."