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th
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Figure 7. Crack in an abrupt transition area.
Initially, fracturing was only observed in the sediments of
former Texcoco lake but, in the last years, the phenomenon has
been widely reported in five areas of Mexico Valley: a) South
zone: Xochimilco, Tláhuac and Chalco; b) East zone: Iztacalco,
Iztapalapa, Nezahualcoyotl, Chimalhuacan and Los Reyes; c)
Center area: Peñon de los Baños and Venustiano Carranza; d)
North-West zone: Naucalpan, Azacapotzalco and G. A. Madero
and e) North-East zone: former Texcoco lake.
3 CONCLUSIONS
Land subsidence is an ongoing process that affects the former
lacustrine zone of Mexico City. Soil fracturing associated to
land subsidence causes serious problems to the citizenship and
the infrastructure of the metropolitan area of Mexico valley.
Until now, actions in this regard have been isolated, and only
short term solutions have been implemented without really
trying to understand the problem in greater depth and to
evaluate the true efficiency of these solutions.
Efforts by different groups, in particular by the
Geocomputing Laboratory of II UNAM to achieve a better
monitoring of the subsidence phenomenon of the lacustrine
zone of Mexico City, as well as of others aspects of the
geotechnical problematic, like soil fracturing, have allowed to
obtain useful results but they just constitute the first stage of a
huge monitoring work which should be followed on in a
systematic way in the future. Institutional will to give continuity
to these studies and availability of the required resources for its
realization are essential to obtain satisfactory and up to date
results.
4 REFERENCES
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