ADVISORS, PLEASE NOTE! NEW COURSE OFFERED IN FALL 2010!

 

GEOGRAPHY 331

 

NATURAL HAZARDS

 

In January 2010, a devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.0 destroyed much of the infrastructure of the Caribbean country of Haiti and killed nearly 200,000 people. A month later in February, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked the country of Chile, again destroying entire cities and killing nearly 1000 people. This earthquake ranks 7th all time in magnitude but luckily did not generate the tsunami many thought possible. In Fall 2008, Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike attacked coastal areas of the Southeastern United States in rapid succession and raised a newfound awareness in the U.S. of the fragile relationship between humans and the environment. Could global warming be to blame for the increase in hurricane frequency and severity?

Understanding, analyzing, and predicting the various types of natural hazards is a fundamental topic in Physical Geography, but understanding natural hazards is very relevant to understanding Human and Cultural Geography as well. In Fall 2010, I will offer a course, Geography 331, that focuses on our learning about the natural hazards that occur in our environment. No previous upper level coursework in Geography is required, although students should have completed the Geography 131–132 series as a prerequisite to the major. Many human cultures and societies are affected by natural hazards every day, whether they live in a region frequented by volcanic eruptions (such as Hawai’i and the Philippines), earthquakes (the Caribbean, South America, the Pacific Northwest), tsunami (Indonesia and southeastern Asia), or hurricanes (the Southeastern U.S., Japan, and southeastern China). This course will clearly link together humans and the environment, demonstrating that to better understand cultures and human societies, one needs to better understand the environment in which they live. Topics to be covered include hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanism, earthquakes, floods, tsunami, climate change, and mass movements.

For more information, contact Dr. Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Department of Geography, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0925, 865-974-6029, [log in to unmask]