California mountain ranges are growing higher and human water use looks to be the reason, says a new study by a team of West Coast researchers.

Published this week in the journal Nature, findings show a direct connection between groundwater depletion and mountain uplift in California's Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges.

The study, led by Colin Amos, an assistant professor of geology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., asserts draining the aquifer in California's Central Valley for agricultural irrigation has caused an overall loss of mass within the region, thereby leading to the nearby ground surface and surrounding mountains to shift .

Widespread ground surface sinking, or, subsidence, has been documented in the important agricultural region for decades.

The research has determined that as groundwater is removed, the surrounding sediment compacts, causing a sinking motion that has ended up damaging canals, bridges and levees across the valley.

Meanwhile, Amos and his study team used data generated by the Global Positioning System to explain the slow rise -- by inches -- of the surrounding mountains, as human use over the years has approximated the total volume of Lake Tahoe, 122,160,280 acre-feet, which sits along the California-Nevada border and is the 27th largest lake in the world.

Amos and his research peers also discovered the annual cycle of expansion and contraction noted in both the valley and mountains may be triggering small disturbances to the seismic powerhouse San Andreas Fault, which runs parallel to the Cental Valley.

"Other studies have shown that the San Andreas Fault is sensitive to small-scale changes in stress. These changes appear to control the timing of small earthquakes on portions of the fault, leading to more small earthquakes during dryer periods of the year. Previously, such changes were thought to be driven by rainfall and other hydrologic causes," Amos said in a news release.

"The sustained loss of the groundwater and the resulting upward flexing of the ground surface may also contribute to or even drive these changes in stress," he said.

Amos warns, however, the latest research does not suggest a correlation between groundwater depletion and an increased likelihood of a large earthquake along the fault.

"The real importance of this research is that we are demonstrating a potential link between human activity and deformation of the solid earth, which explains current mountain uplift and the yearly variation in seismicity," he said. "These are questions that lots of geologists have been puzzling over, and it's a real eye opener to think that humans are the ultimate cause."

Considering the state's current drought and "most projections for climate change in California and elsewhere in the Western U.S., groundwater depletion will likely continue, and so will these phenomena," Amos said.