BLUEPRINT

KD : 4.1 Menangkap gagasan utama sebuah explanation text mengenai

terjadinya permasalahan yang terkait dengan lingkungan alam
(banjir, tsunami, gempa, dst) dalam bentuk explanation text
Materials : Natural Disasters
Assessment technique : Multiple-choice test

Level of Cognitive Domain Number

Indicators
C1 C2 C3 C4 of Item
1. Find the main idea
2. Find the specific information
3. Decide the antonym & synonym
4. Decide the title of the text
5. Rephrase a sentence in the text
Total Number of Items 15

TEXT 1

1. What is the synonym of the word “lava” in the text?

2. What happens after the eruption?
3. What is the main idea of the second paragraph?
Text 1
One of the most unpredictable natural disasters, earthquakes occur whenever there’s a sudden
and violent slippage of the Earth’s tectonic plates.

To understand how Earthquakes work, however, we first need to recognize that the Earth’s
surface is not one continuous layer. Rather, the Earth’s crust consists of many plates that slip,
slide, collide, and move past each other on a regular basis.

When these plates suddenly slip past each other, that movement can lead to very real shaking
on the Earth’s surface. While small earthquakes happen dozens, if not hundreds of times a
day, without issue, major earthquakes can cause catastrophic damage and loss of life.

Perhaps the most famous of the recent earthquakes were those in Nepal in 2015 and in Haiti
in 2010, both of which destroyed countless homes and took thousands of lives.

Some earthquakes can also cause secondary, and sometimes even more catastrophic, natural
disasters. In particular, earthquakes can also cause tsunamis, such as the Tōhoku earthquake
and tsunami that took place in Japan in 2011, which triggered tsunami waves that were likely
about 130 feet (40 meters) high.

Text 2
Floods are any instances where water temporarily overflows onto land that is usually dry.
This might seem like a very vague definition and, well, that’s because it is!

As with many types of natural disasters, what constitutes a flood in one place might not
actually be a flood in another. That being said, many of us could identify a flood fairly easily
in a photograph, particularly if we see large amounts of water in streets or other urbanized
areas.

There are many reasons why floods might form, though heavy rainfall is usually a culprit. In
other instances, like we’ll see later in this article when we talk about hurricanes, something
called storm surge could also lead to flooding.

What’s important to keep in mind about floods, however, is that they are often much more
dangerous than they might seem. Even a relatively small flood with about 6 inches (15 cm) of
water depth could knock you off your feet and lead to injury.

The general rule with floods is that you should never try to travel through a flooded area,
regardless of how minor the situation might appear. Trying to walk, drive, or swim through a
flood is almost always a bad idea as rapidly changing currents can drag you into a dangerous
situation.

Text 3
One of the few natural disasters caused by objects that don’t come from our planet Earth,
impact events, or “asteroid impacts,” are collisions between astronomical objects. For our
purposes here, however, the type of impact event that we’re concerned with is between a
meteor and Earth.

Thankfully, impact events don’t happen that often on Earth. This is good news for us humans
(and all of the other animals on our planet) because meteor impacts can cause massive
damage.

The most recent major meteor event was that of the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013. The
Chelyabinsk meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Chelyabinsk Oblast in Russia and
exploded about 14 miles (23 km) above the ground.

While the impact of the meteor itself wasn’t actually the problem in this situation—it was the
explosion itself—the blast from the meteor did destroy several buildings and lead more than
1,500 people to seek medical attention for their injuries.

However, an earlier impact event called the Tunguska event, which took place in 1908, did
cause a major impact. This meteor arrived in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, and it
flattened an estimated 80 million trees.

Although impact events aren’t that common, the fear is that they can cause massive amounts
of damage, injury, and death. Indeed, the thought of a massive rock hurtling toward the
surface of the Earth isn’t exactly a pleasant one. The good news is that many space
organizations, like NASA, are developing technology to alert us if a meteor is on its way.

Text 4
The USGS defines a landslide as any large-scale movement of a mass of debris or rock down
a slope. We would consider landslides to be a form of something called “mass wasting,”
which is effectively the sliding of soil or rock as a result of gravity.

Landslides are unfortunately quite frequent in certain parts of the world and, depending on
their size, they have the ability to wreak massive amounts of destruction.

For example, the largest known recorded landslide in US history was the one caused by the
eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. This landslide is estimated to have moved about 70–
150 miles per hour (112–240 km/h) downslope, bringing with it more than 0.67 cubic miles
(2.8 cubic kilometers) of debris.

Landslides can be caused by a wide range of events, including volcanic eruptions,

earthquakes, and heavy rains. Scientists can sometimes predict landslide-prone slopes, but
forecasting the exact time of a landslide isn’t always easy due to the many factors involved in
landslide formation.
Text 5
Mudslide are technically a type of landslide that includes mostly mud and other similar fast-
moving debris.

Like other types of landslides, mudslides have a whole host of different causes, including
heavy rain and earthquakes. But, slopes where we humans have removed vegetation for
agriculture or other development are particularly prone to mudslides due to the lack of
structure within the soil column.

The worst mudslide in the US in recent memory was that of the 2014 Oso mudslide, which
took place outside the town of Oso in Washington state.

In the region around Oso, which was located along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River,
there were dozens of days preceding the incident that saw periods of heavy rain. There is still
some controversy over what particularly caused the mudslide, but the extent of the disaster is
clear: 43 people lost their lives and nearly 50 buildings were destroyed in the process.

Again, like landslides, scientists can’t always predict when mudslides will occur. But, they
are developing new techniques so they can provide more accurate mudslide predictions in
slide-prone areas.

Text 6
For many of us, the thought of the ground collapsing below our feet is the stuff of
nightmares. But for people in some parts of the wodue to heavy rain fallsrld, sinkholes are a
very real threat on a day-to-day basis.

Sinkholes are defined as any hole that forms below the land surface without an external
draining. They can vary quite a bit in size, from just a few feet wide to more than 100 feet (60
m) in diameter.

Usually what happens is that the bedrock in an area is made of some sort of soluble material,
like limestone, salt beds, or carbonate rock.

As groundwater seeps through the bedrock, it slowly dissolves the rock, causing a hole to
form underground. When enough pressure is applied over the growing hole, the ground will
collapse, leaving behind a massive sinkhole in its wake.

Since sinkhole formation depends a lot on the underlying bedrock of an area, there are certain
regions that are more prone to them than others. In particular, the state of Florida is known
for its sinkholes. But, unfortunately, there’s not really a great way to predict them using
current technology.
Text 7
Okay, okay, we know: Solar flares don’t exactly happen on Earth, but we promise that they
do have real-life impacts on our lovely planet.

A solar flare is effectively a major explosion that happens on the surface of the sun. While
our sun might be very far away, these solar flares can cause massive disruptions to our
planet’s magnetic field.

In particular, solar flares and their associated geomagnetic storms can cause issues with
electrical power outages and communications satellites due to the energy that they emit.
These flares can also affect radio communications on Earth, which is pretty wild to think
about.

One of the best-known instances of a solar flare affecting us humans was the geomagnetic
storm that caused a power blackout in parts of Canada in 1989. The storm destroyed power
transmission to more than 6 million Canadians around Quebec and even affected power
transformers as far away as the US state of New Jersey.

Although technology has come a long way since the 1989 geomagnetic storm, we are still at
risk of power and communications issues as a result of solar flares. This issue has long been a
point of concern for space agencies around the world, but more research is needed to find a
reliable solution during these natural disasters.

Text 8
Thunderstorms are often grouped together with natural disasters, but, interestingly enough,
they aren’t really a disaster in their own right.

From a meteorologist’s perspective, a thunderstorm is a type of storm that results from deep,
moist convection in the troposphere. These storms are labeled as thunderstorms when they
produce lightning, which then produces thunder.

Despite this, thunderstorms aren’t a major threat in their own right, unless they also bring
other aspects of severe weather, like damaging straight-line winds, flash flooding, hail,
lightning, and tornadoes.

So, many of the natural disasters on our list actually come from thunderstorms. This means
that a thunderstorm on the horizon could bring with it a whole host of issues. As a result, it’s
important to pay attention to severe weather warnings before going to any outdoor activities
such as camping, particularly in thunderstorm-prone areas, like Florida and the Great Plains
of the US and Canada.
Text 9
Long a part of the human imagination, tsunamis are massive waves that are caused by
geologic activity. These waves are usually instigated by earthquakes or undersea volcanic
eruptions, both of which can cause the propagation of seismic waves through the ocean.

However, contrary to popular belief, tsunamis don’t look like huge ocean waves. Rather, they
look a lot like a large wall of water heading toward the shoreline like a rapidly rising tide.

Tsunamis are a threat whenever there’s some sort of geologic disturbance to the seafloor. But,
the biggest ones are associated with volcanic eruptions or major earthquakes, like that of the
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami.

The earthquake that triggered the tsunami was measured as a magnitude 9.1, and it struck in
the middle of the Indian Ocean. This caused the formation of a devastating tsunami about 30
minutes later in places like Sri Lanka and Sumatra. More than 200,000 people died during the
tsunami in 14 countries, making it one of the worst disasters on record.

Many tsunami-prone places have early warning detection systems and sirens in place to alert
people to the possibility of danger. If you hear a siren or receive a warning about a tsunami,
immediately stop what you are doing and seek out higher ground until the threat passes, and
encourage others around you to do the same.

Text 10
Volcanoes are openings along the crust of the Earth where lava, gases, and ash can escape.
When these materials escape from the opening on the planet’s surface, we call this a volcanic
eruption.

In popular culture, we think of volcanic eruptions as catastrophic events with shooting lava,
rocks, and other debris. This actually isn’t too far from the truth for some types of volcanoes,
but many volcanoes just aren’t as violent.

Indeed, some eruptions are decidedly not violent and they simply have a steady stream of
lava flowing from their slopes. But, others like the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, can be
disastrous. Meanwhile, others still can disrupt global air traffic due to particulates in the
atmosphere, like the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in 2010 in Iceland.

Researchers have become better at predicting eruptions; however, this is not an exact science.
They will often know that a volcano is at threat of an eruption, but predicting the exact time
of a volcanic event is still beyond our current capabilities.