Land subsidence severely threatens most of the coastal plains around the world where high productive industrial and agricultural activities and urban centers are concentrated. Coastal subsidence damages infrastructures and exacerbates the effect of the sea-level rise at regional scale. Although it is a well-known process, there is still much more to be improved on the monitoring, mapping and modeling of ground movements, as well as the understanding of controlling mechanisms. The International Geoscience Programme recently approved an international project (IGCP 663) aiming to bring together worldwide researchers to share expertise on subsidence processes typically occurring in coastal areas and cities, including basic research, monitoring and observation, modelling and management. In this paper, we provide the research communities and potential stakeholders with the basic information to join the participating teams in developing this project. Specifically, major advances on coastal subsidence studies and information on well-known and new case studies of land subsidence in China, Italy, The Netherlands, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are highlighted and summarized. Meanwhile, the networking, dissemination, annual meeting and field trip are briefly introduced.

In the Netherlands land subsidence is a continuously ongoing process. Consequently, an increasing number of people and economic assets are exposed to subsidence, damage costs are soaring, and flood risk and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing. In some areas tipping points have already been reached, where current land-use can no longer be maintained without considerable costs, underlining the urgency to take action.

Together with a consortium consisting of universities, research institutes, governmental agencies, public and private partners we have developed a national, multidisciplinary research programme aiming to develop an integrative approach to achieve feasible, legitimate and sustainable solutions for managing the negative societal effects of land subsidence, connecting fundamental research on subsidence processes to socio-economic impact of subsidence and to governance and legal framework design.

The program is designed to co-create insights that help to effectively mitigate and adapt to subsidence within the Netherlands by making major improvements in measuring and modeling the processes and consequences of subsidence, identifying, developing and critically evaluating control measures and designing governance and legal approaches that facilitate their implementation. Hereto we will develop (a) new satellite-based technology to measure, attribute and monitor subsidence, (b) solid understanding of the interacting multiple processes contributing to total subsidence, (c) sophisticated physical and economic numerical models to predict human-induced subsidence rates and impacts, and (d) implementation strategies that go beyond technical measures, to strengthen governance and financing capacities as well as legal frameworks. This fully integrated approach deals with all impacts of land subsidence on society and the economy.

Understanding of complex sedimentary records formed by transgressive systems is critical for hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, and carbon capture and storage. This paper discusses the facies proportions and preservation of the Last Interglacial and Holocene transgressive systems tracts in the Netherlands and their applicability as a North Sea Basin analogue for the Early Jurassic Åre Formation in the Norwegian offshore. New and existing data from both (sub-)modern transgressive Rhine records were thoroughly reviewed from a sequence stratigraphic perspective, before volumetrics were calculated and longitudinal trends quantified at reservoir scale. Large differences between the Last Interglacial and Holocene transgressive systems were found: the volume of fluvial deposits is almost six times larger and the volume of organics nearly twenty times larger in the Holocene record than in the Last Interglacial record. In contrast, the volume of estuarine deposits in the Holocene record is only half of that of the Last Interglacial record. Remarkably, both records show similar averaged sediment-trapping rates of 8–9 km³/ka. Initial valley configuration and relative sea-level rise-rates during both transgressions were key controls on the volume and spatial arrangement of the transgressive deposits. Relative sea-level fall and river avulsion determined what amount of sediment was left preserved after completion of one interglacial-glacial cycle. Comparison of the Late Quaternary Rhine records with the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic Åre Formation in the Heidrun Field off mid-Norway, showed the potential of the (sub-)modern Rhine records as analogues for ancient stratigraphic records. Especially the transgressive Rhine sequence from the Last Interglacial provided remarkable similarities in facies proportions, preservability, autogenic processes and controlling forcings, ranging from metre-scale vertical-successions to kilometre-scale field-wide events for parts of the Åre Formation. The side-by-side availability of the truncated Last Interglacial and (still) fully preserved Holocene transgressive system proved to be an excellent natural laboratory to study the stratigraphic architecture and assess depositional trends and preservability over longer time scales (>100 ka). It nevertheless demonstrates that no ‘one-size-fits-all’ analogue exists, but that various other analogues are needed to solve the complex puzzle which the Åre Formation resembles.