America quietly grew 400,000 square miles last month

• The US government claimed more land for the country as of last month
• This addition included six areas of submerged offshore areas.
• Read more: East Coast cities from Florida to New Hampshire are sinking

The United States has quietly expanded by 386,000 square miles in the last month, nearly twice the size of Spain.

The US Department of State (DOS) has added six regions of submerged areas, or extended continental shelves (ECS), to its total land area, allowing the country to claim more surrounding underwater territory.

The seven regions include the Arctic, Atlantic (East Coast), Bering Sea, Pacific (West Coast), Mariana Islands, and two Gulf of Mexico regions.

DOS said the United States has changed the geographic coordinates that define the outer boundaries of the continental shelf in areas more than 200 nautical miles from the coast.

The largest region of the ECS in the United States is in the Arctic, and the area of ​​all ECS regions is approximately twice the size of California.

The Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said the announcement had important implications for securing U.S. territorial rights in the Arctic.

The Arctic ECS extends northward to a distance of more than 350 nautical miles (to the east) and 680 nautical miles (to the west) from the baseline of U.S. territorial waters.

However, the change is consistent with the 1990 agreement with Russia over a maritime boundary that passes through the Bering Strait.

“The countries have drawn the outer boundaries of their continental shelves consistent with the boundaries established in the 1990 Agreement on Maritime Boundaries between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, so there is no need to negotiate with Russia in the future. “No,” the Wilson Center said, “and this is being applied provisionally by agreement between the two countries.”

Brian Van Pay, a project director at the State Department, noted that Canada likely has overlapping claims that could be negotiated in the future.

The State Department said the extended continental shelf claim was made in accordance with the provisions of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The U.S. Senate has not ratified the treaty, but after 40 years the government has announced the limits of the continental shelf.

DOS led the ECS effort through the U.S. ECS Task Force, a 14-agency U.S. government interagency organization.

“The continental shelf is an extension of a country’s landmass that lies beneath the ocean,” DOS shared in a statement.

“Like other countries, the United States has the right under international law to protect and manage the resources and critical habitat on and under the ECS.”

Determining the outer limits of the ECS required data on the depth, geometry, and geophysical properties of the seafloor and subsoil.

“40 missions at sea. We went into areas we’d never explored before and discovered entire seamounts we didn’t even know existed,” Van Pay told Alaska Public.

“And if you add up all the time scientists spend at sea, it will take more than three years to collect the data.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) collected and analyzed the necessary data.

Data collection began in 2003 and is the largest ocean mapping effort ever undertaken by the United States.

“The United States has major economic interests in undersea areas rich in oil, natural gas, minerals, and marine life, to which it has sovereign rights under the law of the sea as reflected in the Convention on the Law of the Sea. , has been clear for a long time,” said the Wilson Center, which provides bipartisan advice and insight on world affairs.

“This is also an important milestone that reflects the United States’ commitment to the law of the sea, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and as an aspect of advancing the United States’ primary interests in the Arctic and elsewhere. be.” ‘