Natural Hazards Review

Natural Hazards Review

Natural events that can have huge negative impact on human life.

Natural Hazard

When a hazard cauases injury, loss of life, or property damage, it's called a natural disaster. All disasters are hazards, but not all hazards are disasters.

Natural Disaster

Remember these images for next slide!

Multiple Choice

Which of the former images can be considered natural disasters?

• Both are natural hazards

• The wildfire is a hazard, the flood is a disaster

• the wildfire is a disaster, the flood is a hazard

• Both are natural disasters

Let's expand our knowledge...

Do you like musicals? Let's watch the following clip

Geologic
Natural
Disasters

Are those that originate from geologic activity or processes.

Mountains of rock and hardened ash, that have a crater and have erupted through Earth's crust

​

Volcanoes

A flood of wet concrete that can travel at 200km/h and carry away everything with it

Lahar

Melted rock that can trigger wildfires and encase everything in rock when it cools and hardens

​​Lava

A steaming landslide of gas and ash that can boil everything alive and travel at 700km/h

Pyroclastic flow

​Can continue to fall weeks or months after the eruption, burying crops, forests, or buildings

​​Volcanic ash

Multiple Choice

Why volcanic eruptions are so difficult to handle

• It can produce several different natural disasters at once

• The conditions to handle a volcano are extremely dangerous

• A violent volcanic eruption can causa a lot of damage really fast

• All of the above

Violent shakings of the Earth due to energy being released because of movement in the Earth's crust

​

Earthquakes

Water dissolves rock underneath the surface and the ground can collapse

Sinkhole

Powerful waves caused by landslide, earthquakes, or eruptions

​​Tsunami

Explore: News article about sinkhole

Explore: News article about tsunami

The collapse of the side of a mountain, which carries rocks, soil, vegetation, and can cover and bury structures and people

Landslides

Similar to the landslide, but only includes huge amounts of snow

Avalanche

Explore: News article about landslides

Explore: News article about avalanche

Atmospheric
Natural
Disasters

Are those that originate from atmospheric activity or processes.

A violent, unusual weather condition, that can include rain, strong winds, lightning, snow, etc.

​

Storms

Naturally occurring due to the ignition of vegetation because of lightning strikes or volcanic eruptions.
It is considered atmospheric because it alters weather conditions.

Wildfire

A period of unusually dry conditions that can affect people by severe temperatures and bad crops, as well as water-shortage-derived situations.

​​Drought

Storms with high pressence of thunder and lightning.

Thunderstorm

Heavy rain and poor drainage conditions can lead to floods, which is parts of dry land that have been submerged by water.

Flood

Storms with special conditions that allow precipitation to fall in the form of hailstones, which are ice crystal bigger than 5mm in diameter

Hailstorm

Heavy snowfall during extended periods of time, or short bursts of lots of snow. Low temperatures, slippery surfaces and blocked roads are some of the consequences

Snowstorm

A spinning air vortex that connects a thunderstorm (super cell) to the ground.

​

Tornadoes

A spinning tropical storm with sustained winds of 74mph or more.

​

Hurricanes

• Hurricanes

• ​Cyclones

• Typhoons

They can also be called...

They are the same phenomenon, but the name changes depending of the place they occur

Let's review and test what we have seen so far...

Categorize

Options (10)

Tornado

Hurricane

Hailstorm

Wildfire

Drought

Earthquake

Flood

Landslide

Tsunami

Volcanic eruption

Organize these natural disasters into the right categories

Atmospheric

Geologic

Categorize

Options (3)

Typhoon

Cyclone

Hurricane

Organize these options into the right categories

Southeast Asia

Indian Ocean and Oceania

Americas and the Caribbean

To predict are efforts to forecast occurrence, intensity, and effects of natural hazards. Not all are predictable, and some have uncertainty regarding where and when they will happen.

​

​How can we better predict natural disasters?

What is scientific understanding?

Basically, anything that help us understand why natural disasters occur

Normally, they include the scientific method to answer questions regarding the natural disaster.

• Which conditions are needed for it to occur

• Which conditions can worsen it

• What are the causes

• Etc

• Which slopes are more prone to avalanches or landslides?

• Which weather conditions can cause floods?

• How human activity can create more wildfires?

• Etc

What is monitoring?

To gather data remotely from places of interest

• Technology has made it easier to watch over atmospheric and other abiotic data

• Sometimes, to gather information required going to incredibly hazardous places, or just plain impossible

• It also allow us to faster interpretation due to software technologies

What is historical data?

To analyze trends in past events

• Requires a thorough archive of information and sometimes updating data.

• Allow access to location, duration, and intensity of events that happened, and analyze the conditions when they happened

• Some events have predetermined place, but not time (earthquakes). Others, they occur at a time but change locations (hurricanes)

Multiple Choice

This is an example of

• Spatial monitoring

• Temporary monitoring

• Neither

• Both

Multiple Choice

This is an example of

• Spatial monitoring

• Temporary monitoring

• Neither

• Both

Multiple Choice

This is an example of

• Spatial monitoring

• Temporary monitoring

• Neither

• Both

Open Ended

What will be the complications of placing a person monitoring an environment like a volcano?

Open Ended

Based on the image, how must be the preparations against tornadoes in countries like USA and Argentina compared to countries like Colombia and India? Explain both cases

The 4 spheres of the Earth and Human Activity

All the gasses that we find on Earth, no matter the composition

Atmosphere

All the solid surface and the materials that make it

​​Geosphere

All life forms that we find on Earth

Biosphere

All the water in all of its forms

​​Hydrosphere

All spheres are connected

Pollution can cause plastic to enter the ecosystem. Because it takes too long to decompose, sometimes breaks into tiny pieces that can exist inside the organisms, with unknown consequences

Microplastics

Excess nutrients can cause algae to grow a lot, producing toxins and eliminating the oxygen from the water, killing wildlife and leaving water nonusable

​​Algal bloom

Rising temperatures and CO2 emissions because of human activity can cause the water to become more acidic, and making organisms with shells to die because of lack of nutrients, affecting all ecosystems

​​Ocean acidification

​Impact on hydrosphere

​Emissions from human activity can make the air more contaminated and can cause smog (smoke+fog) that make people develop respiratory problems

Smog

Gases can mix with rainclouds and create acid rain, damaging crops and weakening structures

Acid rain

​Emissions can change the compossition of gases in the atmosphere, changing climatic patterns around the world with severe consequences

​​Climate change & global warming

​Impact on atmosphere

​Removing soil and plants can make soil more loose and create landslides

Erosion

​Removing huge forest areas for mining removes soil and creates lots of harmful waste

Mining

Clearing natural areas and changing the soil composition can create runoff, alter soil nutrients and create waste

​​Farming

​Impact on geosphere

​Clearing forests and wild areas for urbanization or other purposes damages wildlife and ecosystemic services

Deforestation

​Sometimes species go extinct due to human-induced habitad loss, altering the balance within an ecosystem before we truly understand it

Extinction

​Depleting fishing stocks can make them hard to recover without proper management and cause worldwide hunger and ecosystemic collapse

​​Overfishing

​Impact on biosphere

Mr. George

Use this and your study guide to study. Reach out if you need it. Best of luck!