Chapter 4
Natural Environmental
Hazards
Natural environmental hazards
Natural environmental hazards are those conditions or
processes in the environment that give rise to economic
damage or loss of life in human populations.
Natural hazards are distinguished from human
environmental disturbances by the fact that they owe their
origin to the “God-given” environment rather than to human
action.
The most important natural hazards include floods,
droughts, earthquakes, tornadoes, and fire.
Examples of human environmental disturbances include air
pollution, water pollution, improper disposal of toxic wastes.
CLASSIFICATION AND MEASUREMENT OF NATURAL
HAZARDS
Natural hazards clearly include a wide range of different phenomena.
They can be classified according to their proposal causal process:
Geophysical Biological
Climatic and Geologic and
Meteorological Geomorphic Floral Faunal
Snow and ice Avalanches Fungal diseases Bacterial and viral
Droughts Earthquakes (e.g. athlete’s foot, diseases (e.g.
Floods Erosion (including Dutch elm disease, influenza, malaria,
Fog soil erosion and wheat stem smallpox, rabies)
Frost shore and beach disease, rust) Infestations (e.g.
Hail erosion) Infestations (e.g. rabbits, termites,
Heat waves Landslides weeds, locusts)
Tropical cyclones Shifting sand phreatophytes, Venomous animal
Lightning and fire tsunamis water hyacinth) bites
Tornadoes Volcanic eruptions Hay fever
Poisonous plants
The fields of geology and geophysics are subdivided into
specializations such as:
Seismology – dealing with earthquakes
Vulcanology - having to do with volcanoes
Geomorphology – treating erosion and landslides
HOW ARE NATURAL HAZARDS MEASURED?
There are two main approaches:
1. RICHTER SCALE- measures earthquakes in terms of the
energy released. The unit is ergs.
- this energy is measured by a seismograph, a very
delicate instrument calibrated so that the
amount of the displacement of the pen
reflects the amount of energy released as
transmitted by the seismic waves.
2. MODIFIED MERCALLI SCALE- tries to measure not the
earthquake itself, but its impact on people.
IMPACT- from two earthquakes may bear no relationship to their
level on Richter scale.
4
FACTORS AFFECTING THE IMPACT
OF SNOWSTORMS IN URBAN AREAS
Frequency of major snow storm events The more frequent, the more prepared the city
will be and the less impact there will be per
unit of snowfall.
Slope of terrain, especially streets and highways Snow accumulations on sloping streets have a
much greater disruptive impact on traffic than
do similar amounts of snow on level ground
Time of occurrence Snowstorms occurring at night or in the middle
of the day have less impact on traffic than do
snowstorms at rush hour. Snowstorms occurring
during the weekend have less impact on traffic
than do those occurring on weekdays.
Associated temperature level At temperature close to freezing, applications of
salt to highways clears them quickly; at lower
temperatures, the snow has to be ploughed and
physically removed.
Availability of public transportation A city with a well-developed public transit system,
including a subway (underground) railway system,
has an alternative means of transportation not
available in cities that are more heavily
dependent on private cars.
What is a natural
hazard?
It is an extreme event in nature,
potentially harmful to humans and occurring
infrequently enough to be considered not part
of the normal condition or state of the
environment, but often enough to be of concern
on a human time scale.
FLOODS- it has two meanings: in its
commonsense meaning it is a natural hazards,
but in another, stricter, sense a flood is merely
an extreme geophysical event.
HAZARD = f(risk x exposure x
vulnerability x response)
Risk – considered to be the frequency of events
causing losses.
Exposure- the magnitude of population and
structures at risk.
Vulnerability – can be measured in terms of
preparedness, where a high degree of preparatory
actions, often based previous experiences, results
in a low vulnerability.
Response- includes the actions taken by those
directly affected and external government agencies
to mitigate losses the environmental hazard might
cause.
IMPACTS AND TRENDS
Everyone is affected by natural hazards, not only
the obvious “victims”. We tend to think of the term victims
because the impact of hazards is dramatically reported
when a disaster occurs.
The full spectrum of impacts which shows
approximate estimates of impacts and various kinds (from
death to taxes) that are expected to result from recurrence
of the famous 1906 earthquake in San
Francisco. The impacts now would be very different since
the city has changed so much since 1906. The impacts
now would be very different since the city has changed so
much since 1906. In that event, 450 people were killed and
514 city blocks containing 28,000 buildings were almost
totally destroyed by the earthquake or the subsequent fire
which continued 4 days.
EXTREME EVENTS AND
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
When extreme events occur in nature, they have a direct
impact on humans by causing property damage, deaths, and
injuries. They also have an indirect impact by changing the
character of the environment.
Catastrophists – those who emphasize the importance of extreme
events can point to the role of floods in erosion and deposition, the
role earthquakes in mountain lakes.
Uniformitarians – the slow evolution of the earth under the long
continuation of processes that can be observed every day.
The study of the impacts of natural hazards is therefore
doubly important: it has value both in its own right and for what we
can learn that is applicable to human environmental disturbances.
TRENDS AND DEATHS AND DAMAGES FROM
SELECTED NATURAL HAZARDS IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1954- 1978
HAZARD DAMAGES DEATHS
Avalanche + +
Coastal erosion + NA
Drought ? NA
Earthquake + +
Flood + +
Frost + NA
Hail + NA
Adjustments and their classification
Natural hazards are divided into three parts:
1.Pre- industrial – in pre- industrial societies, the means were not
generally available to control or to attempt serious
modifications of the natural environment.
2.Industrial – early major water-control schemes in the industrial
period were precursors of the
application of modern technology to the control of
the environment.
3.Postindustrial - for all its achievements, the application if
technology to the control of environmental systems
is increasingly seen to be deficient unless it also
takes into account both its own inherent limitations
and the probable future behavior of people in
social and economic systems.
For these purposes, it is now common to
speak of adjustments to hazards and to
include within the set of adjustments all
possible actions that might be taken to
achieve a balance. There are five sets of
achievements:
1.Sharing and bearing losses, or acceptance
2.Hazard control, or technological control
3.Social adjustments, or regulation
4.Radical use, change and migration, or relocation
5.Emergency planning, or emergency measures
ACCEPTANCE- the most common response to
natural hazards, even today, is to accept the
losses.
TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACH- a second set of
adjustments consists of those aimed at
controlling the natural events themselves.
REGULATION- this is a wide range of possible
adjustments in the operation human society
that can reduce vulnerability to natural
hazards.
RELOCATION- an extreme form of social
adjustment is land-use change and migration.
EMERGENCY MEASURES- many local, national,
and international government agencies have
formally established emergency organizations
to prepare for and respond to disasters of both
human and natural origin.
CLASSIFICATION
For any natural hazard, there are so many
theoretical possibilities for adjustment that it becomes
helpful to classify them into types.
Three main classifications are in common use.
The first, already described, is the distinction between
those adjustments directed at control of the environment
or the natural processes themselves and those that
involve changes in human society or in the pattern of
social action and behavior.
The second classification of adjustments is
based on the criterion of timing (i.e., it specifies those
actions to be taken before, during, and after the hazard
event.)
The third classification of adjustments is seen in
the distinction between actions taken by private
organizations, such as companies, and by government at
all levels from local to federal.
THEORITICAL PERSPECTIVE:
FUTURE POSSIBLE RESPONSES
In the introduction to this chapter it was
suggested that natural hazards are not entirely
natural: while the physical or environmental
processes that give rise to extreme events are
natural, the intensity of their consequences or
impacts depends a great deal on what people have
decided to do or not to do about them.
Systematic research on and observation of
the effects of policies based on the positive model or
theoretical approach have revealed that the positive
feedback efforts to control floods also produce
negative feedback effects which provide human
populations with incentives to expand floodplain
activities, adding more population and property.
END OF PRESENTATION
