The earthquake occurred in the backarc region of the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. The earthquake shaking caused moderately severe damage, VIII on the Mercalli scale. The jolting movement of the seabed made the water rise and fall, which set off a terrifying tsunami. The fast-moving waves spread in all directions. They hit Okushiri less than four minutes later.
The S-waves shake the ground making earthquakes so damaging and the reactor core is shut down (Kerger, 2011. Four miles below the surface the earth is altering caught in a gigantic slow motion collision. Japan lies at the Pacific Plate and rams into the Eurasian Plate causing the Eurasian Plate to shift and cave under. Eventually the plates snap causing an earthquake. This earthquake lasted an impressive five minutes and measured at a magnitude 9.0.
(Some geologists argue that this portion of the Eurasian Plate is actually a fragment of the North American Plate called the Okhotsk microplate.) A part of the subduction zone measuring approximately 190 miles (300 km) long by 95 miles (150 km) wide lurched as much as 164 feet (50 metres) to the east-southeast and thrust upward about 33 feet (10 metres). (“Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011, 1”) A series of extremely destructive tsunami waves followed the 9.0 earthquake along with the dozens of foreshocks and aftershocks that came with it. The city of Sendai, its surrounding area and airport were pounded by a wave
The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years. Within hours of the earthquake, killer waves radiating from the epicentre slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, damaging countries from east Africa to Thailand. A tsunami is a series of waves, and the first wave may not be the most dangerous. A tsunami “wave train” may come as surges five minutes to an hour apart.
First, the melting of ice caps and glaciers is releasing water into the oceans. Second, human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, combined with natural activities, it causes the rise of the earth's surface temperature.3 Second, climate change is already having a serious effect on every continent and throughout the world’s ocean. The consequences of sea level rise mainly reflected in three aspects: cultural heritages, indigenous communities and coastal lands. 4 First, sea level rise threats cultural world heritage. Data shows that 136 out of 700 listed cultural heritages throughout the world will be affected in the long term.
Cities are located near dangerous earthquake zones all throughout the country, from the most infamous on the West Coast to potential time bombs in the Midwest and even on the Eastern Seaboard. Stretching from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to northern California is the Cascadia subduction zone, where one giant plate of the Earth's surface is diving deep beneath another one. “The very largest earthquakes all occur on subduction zones”, said seismologist Geoffrey Abers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York. "These are also the faults that make very large tsunamis that propagate across ocean basins to cause a lot of damage.” This means that our home state, Washington, falls into that “at risk” category. The earthquake threat in Washington is
| The Effects of Climate Change on Humans, Animals, and Plants | | | | The Effects of Climate Change on Humans, Animals, and Plants | | | By: Alice wang For: Mrs. Bearse Date: January 23rd, 2012 By: Alice wang For: Mrs. Bearse Date: January 23rd, 2012 The Effects of Climate Change on Humans, Plants, and Animals By: Alice Wang Climate change has become an extremely serious issue due to global warming. Global warming is the gradual increase of the Earth’s temperature due to greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. This change affects all species on Earth including humans, plants and animals. Global warming is responsible for the melting of glaciers, the loss of biodiversity, and the drastic climate change in the Arctic. The increase in the average global temperature causes the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
‘How do people and society respond to environmental hazards and what factors influence their choice of adjustments?’ (Cutter 1996). Discuss this statement with reference to examples of both natural and technological hazards. Introduction Environmental hazards fall under two headings: Chronic and Catastrophic. Catastrophic hazards are those with a high magnitude and low frequency. They create huge media attention as the rate of change from what would have been considered as ‘normal’ conditions is very high, for example an earthquake can turn an entire city to ruins and kill hundreds of people in just minutes.
A global average temperature rise of only 1C could have serious implications. Possible consequences include melting of polar ice caps; an increase in sea level; and increases in precipitation and severe weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, floods, and droughts. Indirect effects include increases in infectious disease, weather-related deaths, and food and water shortages. All these effects put a stress on ecosystems and agriculture, and threaten our planet as a whole. (Colborn, Kwiatkowski, Schiltz, and Bachran.,
This prevents certain species of mammals and plants from returning back to their native land, which drastically changes the vegetation and habitat of certain areas. This paper will look at proposed factors that caused previous ice ages and glaciation periods: atmospheric composition, Milankovitch cycles (Earth‘s orbit around the sun), the movement of tectonic plates and changing continental positions. Our Earth’s atmosphere is made up of such gases