Abstract. Land subsidence is a major threat for the livability of deltas worldwide. Mitigation of the negative impacts of subsidence, like increasing flooding risk, requires an assessment of the potential of the deltas' subsurfaces for subsidence. This enables the prediction of current and future subsidence and optimization of sustainable management strategies. In this paper we present a method to determine the amount of compaction within different Holocene deltaic peat sequences based on a case study from the Rhine-Meuse delta, the Netherlands, showing the potential of these sequences for subsidence due to peat compaction.