Natural Hazards, Disasters, & Catastrophes of England

This week’s chapter is about plate tectonics. It explains how they move and their effects on the earth’s surface. The earth is divided into twelve different plates, most of which consists of part of a continent and part of an ocean. The diving lines of these plates are called the boundaries. On these boundaries there tend to be a lot of volcanos and earthquakes, which is called “geologic activity”.  The movements of these plates are: Divergent, where they move away from each other Transform, where they pass by each other  Convergent where they move toward each other After I had a clear understanding of plate tectonics I went ahead and research about England’s location when it comes to plate tectonics’ locations and boundaries.  I discovered that it is on the Eurasian plate but it is not near its boundary. This means that currently there is no tectonic activity. However, in the last 700 million years England, along ...

There are natural processes, such as earthquakes, that only become dangerous when humans are on their way. When the case is that humans actually happen to be on the way then such processes become “natural hazards”. Disasters and catastrophes are similar in the way that they damage property and take people’s lives.  The difference between these two however, is that a disaster occurs over a short period of time and an average of 100 or less people are affected. A catastrophe is a lot more destructive and costs a lot more money as well as many years to recuperate from. One example of this is hurricane Katrina which costed an estimated $100 billion in damages which is the largest catastrophe in the US. Global weather has been changing in the last half century that natural disasters have increased dramatically all around the world. For example, devastating fires have happened where homes have been damaged, or heavy snow storms where people are not able to l...