File: Field of spinach near San Joaquin Valley, California.

Parts of California’s Central Valley have been sinking for years, but a new Stanford study quantifies just how much the ground has given way in the past two decades.

In the San Joaquin Valley, the vast swath of land responsible for much of the state’s agricultural production, the study showed that the ground receded nearly 1 inch per year from 2006 to 2022. The new investigation fills in a gap in the data, allowing researchers to look at the full extent of the “subsidence” — the technical term for the ground sinking — in the area and study how to potentially solve the problem in the future.

“I am optimistic that we can do something about subsidence,” Rosemary Knight,........

© SFGate