Tectonic Hazard Profiles Determine the Way in Which People and Governments Respond to Hazards.’ Discuss. (Total 70 Marks)

To what extent can preparedness and planning mitigate the effects of a volcanic hazard (40 marks)

Volcanoes can be found throughout the entire world and are formed when there is a rupture in the mantle of the Earth's crust. This effect allows the output of volcanic lava, ash, and various types of gases. These tectonic plate breaks are normal, the planet Earth is divided into 17 tectonic plates and consistently move against each other forming shifts from low to high intensity. It can cause displacement of earth or water.

Plate Tectonics is a scientific theory which study how the Earth’s plates are driven and shaped by geological forces to keep them in constant movement. The theory explains the present-day tectonic behavior of the Earth, particularly the global distribution of mountain building, earthquake activity, and volcanism in a series of linear belt. (Pitman, W.C., 2007)

A hazard can be define as something which poses a level of threat the life, health, property or environment, a volcano can compromise all these things through the many hazards volcanoes presents. Such as lahars, flash flooding, landslides, pyroclastic flows, ash clouds and many others. There are factors which can influence the severity of the hazard and cause differences in them and can be classified into different categories, such as physical, economic, political and social.

A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. There is a very big difference that helps prepare for a volcanic hazard and that is whether you are in a MEDC or a LEDC. In a MEDC monitoring volcanic zones and potential hazards is an option many LEDC’s don’t have. In Italy at Mt Etna they have Geochemical monitoring programs currently run by INGV which focus on the analysis of temporal changes, chemical changes and seismic activity.

A hazard can be define as something which poses a level of threat the life, health, property or environment, a volcano can compromise all these things through the many hazards volcanoes presents. Such as lahars, flash flooding, landslides, pyroclastic flows, ash clouds and many others. There are factors which can influence the severity of the hazard and cause differences in them and can be classified into different categories, such as physical, economic, political and social.

Earth's plates and continents do not always just stay in one place. They shift, collide, and move apart, causing destruction in many different parts of the world. The movement of plates causes volcanic eruptions, changes in the oceans, and perhaps the most dangerous of all, earthquakes. Earthquakes may have the most devastating effects on people and cities.

On Friday March 11th, 2011 at 2:46 pm, the fifth largest earthquake recorded since 1900 with a magnitude of 9.0, 1.7 Richter scale points greater than the devastating Vancouver Island earthquake of 1946, struck the coast of Japan, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo1, causing a devastating regional and global catastrophe.

The earth’s crust is made out of plate tectonics. Each plate has a defined boundary and direction it moves. The plates in Earth’s crust perform two actions; they submerge under each other or they spread out. The Pacific Plate is the largest plate and it borders around many plates. The Pacific Plate moves northwest. New crust is formed from magma outpours, which are a result of the zones spreading. The tectonic plates created the islands. When the tectonic plates move, it creates the change in geography. Active volcanoes together shape the way islands are build. The magma from the volcano and the deposits from the plate are needed to create

The extent to which tectonic processes represent a hazard depends upon when and where they are experienced (40)

Haiti, Japan, Taiwan...what do they all have in common? All 3 have had unexpected major earthquakes strike them and demolish there land. But what is an earthquake? An earthquake is the movement of earth’s tectonic plates. They happen because a mass energy causes the constantly moving tectonic plates to pass one another in either a transform, convergent or divergent movement, after a long period of time pushing against each other. They usually occur in cities located on the border of the tectonic plates like California, British Columbia (west coast) and Japan. Depending on the intensity of the earthquake, it has the potential to cause a lot of destruction and hurt many civilians. It can degrade community to a point where it would take years to recover. However much destruction has been caused, there are precautions that could be taken before hand to reduce the damage. This report will be comparing 3 major recent earthquakes from Haiti, Japan and Taiwan and how each country is doing post-earthquake.

Natural disasters are the catastrophes cause by “Mother Nature”, which is often difficult to forecast or manage (Morrison, et al 2014). Examples of

Discuss the view that the impact of earthquake hazards depends primarily on human factors (40)

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

“Be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee. Water is powerful as Bruce Lee said, but in 2011 the region of Tohoku Japan learned just how devastating water could be the hard way. What caused the Tsunami was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake which was the most powerful earthquake to ever hit Japan. Why most people know about these events are that the combo of the earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear meltdowns in the Fukushima Power plant. All three of those events were a trifecta of events that caused massive damage and heartache to the people of Japan. It would be hard to plan for all three of these disasters to happen at once but investigating the topic and what was planned could help plan for future tragedies. What happened to public and environmental health in the wake of the Tohoku region earthquake and tsunami.