Environmental Impacts Of Natural Disasters

Different societies around the world have different moral codes, but the importance of water is valued and respected everywhere. Most if not all societies agree with the principles of human dignity and equality for all people. Water is the basis for human survival, which can unite and create solidarity between civilizations. Instead, water is dividing civilizations, causing tension over the precious resource.

Water is one of the necessities of life. Without it, humans can’t survive. It seems like a basic need that is readily available, as 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. However, many people lack a source of clean drinking water, and this number as well as the number of people who die due to not having clean water is rising. According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, “Less than two tenths of 1 percent of the planet’s water is drinkable, and 90 percent of that goes to uses in buildings, including flushing toilets.” Therefore, only a miniscule fraction of the water of the water on Earth is available for drinking. In addition, the average American uses 2,220 gallons of water per day, a number out of proportion with the 844 million people who lack access to safe drinking water. While these statistics sound dire, there are ways to solve this problem. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough water, but how we use the water we have. If we utilize water and the other resources we have access to in an effective way, we can supply the human race as well as other species with sufficient water to survive.

Distressing natural disasters, such as hurricane Irma have devastated the world and caused loss of homes, as well as greatly affecting humanity. According to French Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe of St. Martin, “95 percent of the island’s houses had been damaged and 60 percent were uninhabitable. Earlier, France's interior minister said at least eight people had died.” This devastating hurricane is one of the many examples of how extreme natural disasters negatively impact the world and how dominant Mother Nature is over humanity.

Believe it or not, there are certain parts of the country where natural disasters are just apart of the day-to-day activity. In other words, it’s something residents are familiar with. On the contrary, natural disasters are events that can cause other residents to experience traumatic stress according to the Ohio University. Throughout the West Coast, for example, there are earthquakes. The East and Gulf coast, on the other hand, experience hurricanes. Then throughout the heartland of our country, there are those violent rotating columns of air we call tornados that rip homes to pieces in a matter of minutes.

According to Sources A, B, and C, water needs to be financed efficiently, awareness on water sanitation and safety should be spread, and the solution needs to be eco-friendly, in order to not harm Earth in any way during the process. Water scarcity is estimated to affect one in three people on every continent of the globe, and almost one-fifth of the world’s population live in areas where water is physically scarce. This situation is expected to worsen as competing needs for water intensify along with population growth, urbanization, climate change impacts and increases in household and industrial uses. All in all, there needs to be change on the subject of the water crisis, which will decide whether or not our nation can survive in the

The vulnerabilities when it comes to natural disasters, can be caused from severe weather like storms, droughts, and extreme hot weather. Can also be caused by severe fires. There are areas that have tree limbs overhanging power lines which can cause the powerlines to come down if there is a severe storm that would end up causing these trees to fall on the lines. With inadequate tree trimming this could cause a problem with any kind of weather, with not cutting back tress it makes powerlines more vulnerable with high winds and snow fall from these storms. With these power outages, due to a storm because the trees have not been cut back can cause a blackout and make it vulnerable for a terrorist attack. There is a debate over how serious it can be for terrorists to pose a threat on the U.S. when there is a power outage. Some of the technical failures can come from large accidental outages caused by cascading failures in one of the high voltage transmission systems. The main thing that is focused on with power problems is the transmission and distribution system, substations, and the other associated parts. Human error can also be a problem when it comes to power outages, not doing security checks or system analysis check and finding problems with these systems can also cause power outages. We need electricity so our power system is a potential target for terrorist, even though our electric systems are only one of the targets that terrorist may think of striking but is not

Since the birth of human civilization, mankind has always been playing a competitive game with mother nature. The relentless pursuit of his progress, security, and comfort has resulted in an increase of stress on mother nature. It all began in the year of 1760. What we call the industrial revolution was a major turning point in Earth’s ecology and humans’ relationship with their environment. The revolution drastically changed every aspect of human life and lifestyles. Human development, health, and life longevity to social improvements and the impact on natural resources, the effects were becoming more evident every year. The industrial revolution wasn’t something that was made up overnight, some would say it was started the moment machinery was replacing manual labor. Fossil fuels were to replace the role of wind, water, and food for a more inexpensive, efficient strategy for performing the same tasks. What some didn’t know or even ignore about this substitution was that it could be extremely detrimental to both mother nature and human health. The full impact would not begin to be realized until about one hundred years later. Consequently, the life sustaining environment has been forced to transform more rapidly than it ever has before. The tendency humans have to exert a negative influence on ecology has resulted in a rapid increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, large deforestation, loss of biodiversity, severe land degradation, and environmental pollution.

In the last decade natural disasters have wreaked extensive property damage across the country; some of these storms are enormous that form over water traveling miles to reach the mainland. According to Michael B, Sauter, September, 2016; More than 35 million U.S. single-family homes and condos, the equivalent of $6.6 trillion in residential property, are at high risk of damage from natural disasters. Those homes account for 43% of the total single-family residential property in the United States. The human should always be our first thoughts with these events. Unfortunately, there are other impacts on people’s lives, sometimes the loss of life.

Disasters like the flooding in Houston and the hurricanes across the country are unbelievably destructive and have started to become a major problem for the world. While these storms are supposed to be rare and are labeled as 100 or 500 year events this idea can be misleading to the public (Nadja, 2017). People hear this and assume that these events only occur once every 500 years but this is not the case a 500-year flood has a 1 in 500 chances of occurring every year so it’s possible to occur frequently. However, Nadja states that “changing landscapes — and a changing climate — could alter the probability of flooding” (Nadja, 2014) causing these large storms to become more frequent and possibly more powerful. The earth’s hydrology is changing and causing drastic changes in these storms (Nadja, 2014). In conjunction with this rapid urbanization of areas across Houston is affecting how and where water is flowing which has created lots of problems (Nadja, 2014). These facts come together to create a strong argument that humans are impacting these storms and possibly causing them to become more dangerous and frequent.

While watching the everyday “natural disaster” filled news, did you ever fathom questions consisting the concerns as to why tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods occur every so often? When did society event hurricane season and why? Finally, are natural disasters indeed natural or man-made? To me, natural disasters arise due to the abuse of earths elements by humanity.

Natural disasters (earthquakes, storms, fires, floods, hurricanes) can cause havoc to a supermarket. Many stores see an influx before the event where a lot of stock is sold, but sometimes this doesn’t happen, and the store must deal with a potential loss of electricity, damage to the infrastructure, supplying the building(s) occupied, and an unknown period where personnel aren’t on site to do daily upkeep tasks.

There are tons of natural phenomenon. Such things as landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors, and floods. Today in this article the two topics of Meteors and floods will be the main focus. These disasters can change the earth an astronomical amount. For meteors such things as their craters and their effects on the climate. Floods are more of a tricky subject, but their main effects on the Earth are the effects of erosion and the aftermath of environmental consequences.

It is widely known that water covers up to 70% of our planet’s surface. However, we have never been able to have enough fresh water to meet our demands. Up until now, 1.1 billion people worldwide still lack the access to usable water sources and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. (WWF) Even in a centralized industry area, the main water supply system sometimes not able to meet the demand.

An earthquake that struck Bam, an Iranian city, killed 27,000 people and left 90 percent of housing destroyed. An earthquake just as strong hit San Simeon in California leaving only 2 casualties and 40 damaged homes (Staff). While even just one death is still a tragedy, there is a massive gap between 27,000 individuals and 2. But if both earthquakes hit with the same force, what differed? Why did one earthquake have such a large impact? The simple answer to this lies in the location of the earthquake. The first earthquake occurred in the less developed country of Iran. The other one struck California located in the U.S., a developed nation. Due to a variety of factors, developing countries have proven to be more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters.

According to the analysis, annual and seasonal LAI from 1990 to 2005 were highly variable with sharp reductions in 1994 and 2000 in the No.1 experimental watershed. These variations are associated with forest disturbances such as typhoon and extreme weather. In July 1993, typhoon Lewis struck the South Hainan Island Coast with wind speeds of 41 m s-1, its eye passing through Jiangfengling National Forest Park. The No.1 experimental watershed, located 20 km from the coast, was in close proximity to the path taken by the storm’s eye and received severe damage. After the pass of the storm, mean LAI during the dry season of 1994 (November 1993 to April 1994) was greatly decreased by 12.4% as compared to the mean for dry season of 1993. Storm,