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The Role of Geosciences in the Mitigation of Natural Disasters: Five Case Studies

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Geophysical Hazards

Part of the book series: International Year of Planet Earth ((IYPE))

Abstract

Geoscientific data combined with historical documents on past natural hazard events and on the disasters that followed are essential to improve mitigation plans. It is only with this method that the full scale of potential rapid changes that are not covered by the instrumental record can be obtained. Therefore, the collection of these past data and their integration into planning should become one of the priorities of the Hyogo Framework of Actions. This paper analyses the following five case studies: global warming impact on the indigenous populations at high latitudes of Canada, hurricane impact on the southern coast of the USA as experienced in New Orleans, rapid level rise in several lakes of the Argentinian Pampas with emphasis on Laguna Mar Chiquita, the rapid sea level rise of the Caspian Sea as seen from Iran and the tsunami risk in a large Alpine lake of Northern Italy, Lake Como. In each area, the main natural hazard is part of a potential series of hazards that, if combined, could lead to a shift from disaster to catastrophe. The most successful cases of transfer of information between geoscientists and end-users are when the hazards and subsequent disasters are visible or when the messengers bearing the information are trusted by the local communities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dark Nature website, 2008. Available at http://www.mun.ca/canqua/ICSU-DN/ [Accessed December 2008].

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    Caspian Environmental Program, 2002. Caspian Demographic Profile. CRTC “Human Sustainable Development & Health” Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. By CRTC SHD&H. February 2002. Available at http://www.caspianenvironment.org/scripts/print.pl?word=report_miscell2.htm [Accessed December 2008].

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    Caspian Environmental Program, 2002. Caspian Demographic Profile. CRTC “Human Sustainable Development & Health” Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. By CRTC SHD&H. February 2002. Available at http://www.caspianenvironment.org/scripts/print.pl?word=report_miscell2.htm [Accessed December 2008].

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    Caspian Environmental Program, 2001. Caspian Sea Potential Inundation and Impacts on Human and Natural Environment. December 2001. Ashgabad/Turkmenistan. By Prof. Dr. Frank Schrader, Germany. Available at http://www.caspianenvironment.org/scripts/print.pl?word=report_miscell2.htm [Accessed December 2008].

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    Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Available at http://www.ramsar.org/ [Accessed December 2008].

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Acknowledgements

The first author is grateful to Tom Beer (CSIRO) to have been invited to give a talk on environmental catastrophes at the IGC33 (International Geological Congress) in Oslo. The talk was part of a 2-day megasession on hazards as a contribution to the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). SL would also like to thank the sponsors of the ICSU Dark Nature (via IUGS) and IGCP 490 conference programmes. Some circum-Caspian demographic data and the inundation map used in this publication originate from the Caspian Environment Programme which is thanked for all its work beneficial to the coastal states. ARB acknowledges the assistance of Robert McGhee and Katherine Trumper. Mike Turner (Brunel University) has kindly revised the English of a draft of the manuscript. We are grateful to Klaus Arpe (Max Plank) for fruitful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Environment, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, West London, UK

    S.A.G. Leroy

  2. Department of Geology and Geophysics and Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, 70803, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    S. Warny

  3. Iranian National Centre for Oceanography, 1411813389, Tehran, Iran

    H. Lahijani

  4. CICTERRA-CONICET-UNC, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 5016, Córdoba, Argentina

    E.L. Piovano

  5. Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Ambientali, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, I-22100, Como, Italy

    D. Fanetti

  6. Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Wolfville, NS, Canada

    A.R. Berger

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Correspondence to S.A.G. Leroy .

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  1. CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Station Street 111, Aspendale, 3195, Australia

    Tom Beer

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Leroy, S., Warny, S., Lahijani, H., Piovano, E., Fanetti, D., Berger, A. (2009). The Role of Geosciences in the Mitigation of Natural Disasters: Five Case Studies. In: Beer, T. (eds) Geophysical Hazards. International Year of Planet Earth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3236-2_9

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