An oil slick from the sunk Deepwater Horizon drilling platform is seen near the Mississippi River Delta, from the International Space Station May 4, 2010

(NASA/GETTY )

Millions of people around the world rely on river deltas for everyday life, from the Mississippi to the Amazon. Unfortunately, this could be changing the geological phenomena for good.

A new study from Science Magazine found that The study analyzed 48 major river deltas and found that global sea-level rise, regional water management and human activity are among the factors changing the deltas forever. Highly populated deltas like India’s Ganges-Brahmaputra where the construction of dams and new channels have sunk the land even lower are now far more likely to take a hit from flooding and major natural disasters.

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, losing an estimated 1,900 square-miles of coastal land to the ocean in the last 80-years. The threat of further loss still looms over a large population in the state’s southern fishing communities.

Meanwhile, The Mississippi Delta has also been largely altered by humans but features a vast flood prevention system that includes massive levees. The study found that regions such as this, with the economic means to install safety systems, were at a far lower risk despite how much humans had changed the surrounding deltas.

Still, The Washington Post points to the fact that for Mississippi and other wealthy river delta regions.

The sweeping changes to these deltas don’t appear to be a problem everywhere. A large portion Alaska’s Yukon Dekta serves as a wildlife refuge. The remote area remains almost entirely untouched thanks to a small human population.

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An aerial view of the Amazon river, Amazonas state, Brazil on December 12, 2013. (CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images)