Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Plate Boundary 

Papua New Guinea is inside of the Australian Plate on the plate's border.  Papua New Guinea has many hazards such as Subduction Zones, Volcanoes, & Earthquakes causes for being on the plate border.  In 1900-2000 there was 22 earthquakes that were of a 7.5 magnitude that were recorded in Papua New Guinea. The primary causes of these earthquakes involve thrust faulting in response to the compressional stress due to the subduction zone in this area. Of all the Volcanoes, in Papua New Guinea the most recently erupted volcano is Mount Tavruver which erupted on August 28, 2014-Friday September 12, 2014, resulting in the evacuation of cities near the volcano and causing the residents of Raul to stay indoors to avoid the deadly ash fall.



References 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavurvur
http://www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/maps/v.php?id=4180
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=papua+new+guinea+hazards
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pp.html

Tuesday September 1, 2015

The Distinguishing characteristics of Disasters, Catastrophes and Natural hazards. 

A Disaster or a Catastrophe is a force that causes a significant amount of damage to an area, causing deaths and pulling in government resources such as the Coast Guard, the Red Cross or simply covering the cost to rebuild the damaged area. Disasters and catastrophes, a majority of the time have fatalities. Take for example Hurricane Irene took eight lives and caused $800 million dollars worth of damage. A Natural Hazard is an event that puts a human life at risk but may not necessarily hurt them unless they are in the way of the Hazard taking place. An earthquake for example can possibly hurt a person but if the person takes steps to be out of harms way they wont sustain physical damage to themselves maybe just to their living quarters. An earthquake is just a re-ocurring cycle of the Earth.