Understanding Natural Hazards

THE SCIENCE OF NATURAL HAZARDS

Because of the scientific method, we now understand where and why most
natural disasters occur. For example, because of the theory of plate tectonics, we
understand why nearly 90 percent of all earthquakes and volcanoes occur along
the outer edges of the Pacific Ocean, called the Ring of Fire. The theory of plate
tectonics has also helped to explain why some volcanoes are more explosive and
active than others. We also understand that different tectonic plate boundaries
produce different fault lines and thus different types of earthquakes.

Many natural hazards have seasons, especially those controlled by external

forces. The United States has more tornadoes than the rest of the world
combined and yet most only occur in the spring and early fall. Landslides are
more prone in the spring when snow begins to melt and the saturated ground
causes unstable slopes to slide. Wildfires are common in the middle of the
summer and early fall when the land is dry and afternoon thunderstorms in arid
climates produce lightning without any precipitation. And hurricane season in
the Northern Hemisphere peaks between August and September when the
Atlantic Ocean is warmest.

Since hazards are statistically predictable in some manner, it becomes important

to develop some kind of warning system. Predictions, such as weather
predictions, state that it will occur at a specified time, date, and intensity. It is
like saying, "a major snowstorm will reach Salt Lake City at 4:30 PM for the
commute home." A forecast states a probability of something occurring; such as
"a 40 percent of showers today." Forecasts are much more broad than
predictions.

When a natural disaster event is about to happen or has occurred, a system has
been set up to alert the general public. A watch is issued when the conditions for
a particular event are right. So if a severe thunderstorm is strong enough and
rotating, it is possible that a tornado may form. Or if an earthquake with a
magnitude of 7.5 strikes somewhere in the ocean, a tsunami watch may be
issued because the earthquake was strong enough to generate one. But a watch
does not necessarily mean that it will occur. But if a tornado is spotted on the
ground or a ocean sensor records an approaching tsunami, then a warningis sent
out to the areas that could be impacted.
NATURAL HAZARDS ARE NOT RANDOM
In order to understand how to prepare for a natural hazard, a risk assessment
must be conducted for a specific geographic area. The risk of a potential hazard
is defined as probability of a disaster times the consequence to the human
environment.
  Risk = Probability of Disaster x Consequence of Disaster

It is important to determine the potential risk a location has for any particular
disaster in order to know how to prepare for one. Referring back to Salt Lake
City again, the probability of an earthquake occurring anytime soon is small, but
the consequences to human lives and destruction are very high. Thus there is a
moderately high risk of an earthquake striking Salt Lake City. One of the
limiting factors of risk is knowing the probability of a disaster. Too often
scientific data is lacking enough information to determine how often a disaster
occurs for a particular location. This is particularly true with geologic hazards,
where geologic time is vastly larger than the age of scientific reasoning.

FROM HAZARD TO CATASTROPHE

what is the difference between a natural hazard, a disaster, or a
catastrophe? A hazard is any natural process or even that poses a direct threat to
the human environment. The event itself is not a hazard; rather, a process or
event becomes a hazard when it threatens human interests. A disaster is the
effect of a hazard on society, usually as an event that occurs over a limited time
in a defined geographic area. The term disaster is used when the interaction
between humans and a natural process results in significant property damage,
injuries, or loss of life. Finally, a catastrophe is a massive disaster that greatly
impacted the human environment and requiring significant expenditure of time,
money, and resources for response and recovery.

Currently the earthquake that is expected to strike Salt Lake City is just a
hazard, a natural process that poses a potential treat the human environment,
because it hasn't occurred yet. If that earthquake turns out to be a moderate 5.0
magnitude earthquake than it will likely be considered a disaster. But if the
expected 7.0 to 7.5 magnitude earthquake were to occur, it would be considered
a catastrophe because thousands of people will likely perish, tens of thousands
will be injured, and the economic cost will be in the billions of dollars. An
article by NASA titled The Rising Costs of Natural Hazards talks about how the
financial and human cost of natural disasters is rising. To help prepare for these
disasters, better mitigation efforts will be required such as proper building and
zoning codes, first responder preparedness, and public education.

Natural hazards tend to produce more natural hazards. A major landslide may
destabilize a slope and cause more landslides to occur. An earthquake in Salt
Lake City is likely to also cause landslides, fires, and the ground to
liquefy (liquefaction). Hurricanes tend to produce damaging winds,
tornadoes, and flooding. Thus it is important to know which disasters
are likely to occur in any particular area and what their effects might
be.

In the summer of 2008, China was rocked by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake that
killed over 80,000 people. A week earlier a cyclone struck Burma killing
130,000. On January 12, 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed nearly 300,000
people and leveled the capital city of Port-a-Prince in Haiti. On March 11, 2011
a magnitude 9.0 earthquake generated a tsunami off the coast of eastern Japan,
killing 30,000 people. Are natural disasters getting worse? Not really. Humans
are over-populating the earth and living in more hazard-prone areas. Over the
last 70 years, the world's population has tripled to 6.7 billion. World population
projections suggest that the human population will reach 9 billion by 2050. by
exponentially grow and by 2050 the world's population will reach 9
billion. Exponential growth means the world's population will not grow
linearly (in a straight line), but rather as a percent. Our increased population size
has caused air quality to suffer, reduced the availability of clean drinking water,
increased the world's extreme poverty rate, and has made us more prone to
natural hazards.

There is also a relationship between the magnitude of an event (energy

released) and its frequency (intervals between episodes). The more earthquakes
that occur for a particular location, the weaker they tend to be. That is because
built-up energy is slowly being released at a fairly constant rate. But if there are
long intervals between one earthquake and the next, the energy can build and
can ultimately produce a stronger earthquake. That is the problem with
earthquakes along the Wasatch Front of Utah. The interval or frequency between
earthquakes tends to be 1,500 years, so the magnitude tends to be high because
of the built-up energy. At some point we are going to want to get this earthquake
over with because the longer it waits the worse it will be.

Too often we react to natural disasters rather than prepare or mitigate for them.
Look at New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina. The scientists and engineers had
said for years that the levees would not withstand a strong hurricane, but it
would cost over $6 billion to upgrade them. Not that the has disaster occurred,
we are now rebuilding the levees (most have found the money) at the expense of
1,500 lives and nearly $200 billion in damages. He need to change this
mentality. Too often we say the government does not have the right to tell me
where I can or can not live, but when the disaster strikes we expect the
government to bail up out. Sounds a little like the
financial crisis.

Lava on Mauna Loa, Hawaii Hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean

FORCES, IMPACTS, AND EFFECTS

There are two types of effects caused by natural
disasters: direct and indirect. Direct effects, also called primary effects,
include destroyed infrastructure and buildings, injuries, separated families, and
even death. Indirect, sometimes called secondary effects, are things like
contaminated water, disease, and financial loses. In other words, indirect effects
are things that happen after the disaster has occurred.

How we chose to build our cities will greatly determine how many lives are
saved in a disaster. For example, we should not be building homes in areas that
are prone to landslides, liquefaction, or flash floods. Rather these places should
be left as open-space such as parks, golf courses, or nature preserves. This this is
a matter of proper zoning laws which is controlled by local government. Other
ways we can reduce the impact of natural disasters is by having evacuation
routes, disaster preparedness and education, and building codes so that our
building do not collapse on people.

There are two forces that generate natural hazards. The first are internal forces,
generated by the internal heat of the earth and creates geologic hazards like
earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. In Chapter 2, you will learn about this
process called plate tectonics. This theory proposes that internal heating from
the earth's core causes large tectonic plates, that make up the planet's continents
and oceans, to move around like bumper cars, where they either slam into each
other or pull apart.

External forces influence weather, climate, and landslides. Heating from the
Sun causes differential heating on the surface that ultimately create our weather
and all the hazards associated with it. It is these external forces that create flash
floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, supercells, and climatic disasters such as droughts
and famines.

Unnatural Disasters
Former UN Security General Kofi Annan has said, “The term natural disaster
has become increasingly a misnomer. In reality, human behavior transforms
natural hazards into unnatural disasters.” The vast majority of deaths from
natural disasters occurs in less developed countries. According to the United
Nations, a less developed country (LDC) is a country that exhibits the lowest
indicators of socioeconomic development and ranked among the lowest on
the Human Development Index. Those who live in low income environments
tend to have the following characteristics:

 live in areas that are at a higher risk to geologic, weather, and climate-
related disasters
 live in areas that lack the economics and resources to provide a safe living
infrastructure for its people
 tend to have few social and economic assets and a weak social safety net
 lack the technological infrastructure to provide early warning systems

As human populations have grown and expanded, and technology has allowed
for us to manipulate the environment, natural disasters have become more
complex and arguable more "unnatural." There are a variety of ways how
humans have not only influenced, but magnified the impacts of disasters on
society. For purposes of simplification, this book is going to narrow it down to
four: human population growth, poverty and inequality, environmental
degradation, and climate change.

POPULATION GROWTH AND CONCERNS

In 1798, Thomas Malthus published a short but revolutionary work called “An
Essay on the Principle of Population.” Malthus states that future population
growth would be determined by two facts and one opinion. The facts were that
food is necessary for survival and that men and women would continue to have
sex, thus producing offspring. His opinion is that if population is not restrained
by war, famine, and/or disease, population growth would occur exponentially.
An example of exponential growth is 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and
so on. He also argues that agricultural production of food could only grow
arithmetically. An example of arithmetic growth is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and so on.
The overall assumption is that population growth will quickly grow beyond food
production leading to food shortages and famines.

Malthus' theory has not come to fruition, yet, due to technological advances in
agriculture (fertilizers, insect and drought resistance and better farming
techniques). Some discredit Malthus because his hypothesis is based on a world
supply of resources being fixed rather than expanding. Humans have the ability
to expand the supply of food and other resources by using new technologies to
offset scarcity of minerals and arable land. Thus, we can use resources more
efficiently and substitute new resources with scarce ones. Even with a global
human population of 7 billion, food production has grown faster than the global
rate of increase (NIR). Better growing techniques, higher-yielding and
genetically modified seeds, as well as cultivation of more land have helped
expand food supplies.

While new technologies have helped to increase food production, there are not
enough emerging technologies to handle supply and demand. Adding to the
problem is the fact that many insects have developed a resistance to pesticides.
These problems have cause a slow down and leveling off of food production in
many regions of the world. Without breakthroughs in safe and sustainable food
production, food supply will not keep up with population growth.

Others believe that population growth isn't a bad thing. A large population could
stimulate economic growth, and therefore, production of food. Population
growth could generate more customers and more ideas for improving
technology. Additionally, some maintain that no cause-and-effect relationship
exists between population growth and economic development. They argue that
poverty, hunger, and other social welfare problems associated with lack of
economic development, famines, and war are a result of unjust social and
economic institutions, not population growth.

Lately, there has been a rise in neo-Malthusians. One notable figure is Paul
Ehrlich. In his very popular book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich argues that
population growth cannot continue without controls because the planet will
reach the carrying capacity of our species. In short, we must consider
environmental factors as we discuss overpopulation concerns. For example,
even though humans produce four times the amount of food that we consume,
we produce our food at the price of the environment. The rapid population
growth of the world has caused massive deforestation in the Boreal Forests and
rainforests, increasing desertification that encroaches into arable land, over-
fishing of the oceans, mass extinction of species, air and water pollution, and
anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change. All of these things have
economic and environmental costs that we must consider.

FUTURE OF POPULATION GROWTH

Governments and other entities have the ability to dramatically influence
population change as a way to increase or decrease population growth in a
particular country. For example, some countries take dramatic steps to reduce
their population. China's One-Child Policy dictated that each family (husband
and wife) could legally have only one child. Families that followed this policy
were often times given more money by the government or better housing. If a
family illegally had another child, the family would be fined heavily. Children
born illegally can not attend school and have a difficult time finding jobs,
getting government licenses, or even getting married. Some have reported that
the government would force abortions on families with more than one child.
One of the major consequences of this policy was a dramatic increase in
abortions and infanticides, especially of females. Female infanticide is linked
directly to a global cultural trend that privileges males over females—baby boys
are desired, especially if the family is only allowed one child. This specific
focus on eliminating women is called gendercide. Half the Sky, written by
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, documents global gendercide and what is
being done to combat this problem.

After the two great world wars, the United Nations Population Commission and
the International Planned Parenthood Federation began to advocate for more
global population control. Many groups who advocate for population control
focus on:

 Changing cultural attitudes that keep population rates high (or low)
 Providing contraception to LDCs
 Helping countries study population trends by improving census counts
 Empowering women and emphasizing gender equality

It is believed that worldwide, over 60 percent of women between ages 15-49 use
some form of contraception. This varies regionally. In the United States
contraception use is at nearly 75 percent, whereas in Africa it is around 30
percent. The general consensus today is that the focus on population planning
should be on gender equality and improving the social status of women around
the world. This is the focus of the International Conference on Population and
Development.

Religious organizations are also concerned with population growth; however,

they focus on contraception issues and not strictly population growth. Some
religions and political entities find contraception use immoral which has
influenced some governments to make the access to them and use of them
illegal.

Bibliography
Riebeek, H. (2005, March 28). The Rising Cost of Natural Hazards : Feature
Articles. Retrieved from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/