Natural Hazards Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the Introduction to Natural Hazards lecture notes.

Introduction to Natural Hazards

Natural processes such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes become hazards when they threaten human life and property.

Haiti Earthquake, 2010

An earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians and injured over 300,000 more, exacerbated by high population density, poor construction, and deforestation.

Natural Hazard

A natural process and event that is a potential threat to human life and property, becoming hazardous due to human interaction with the land.

Disaster

A hazardous event that occurs over a limited time span within a defined area, meeting criteria such as a certain number of deaths or affected people.

Catastrophe

A massive disaster that requires significant expenditure of money and a long time for recovery to take place.

Process (Natural Hazards)

The physical, chemical, and biological ways by which events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, and floods affect Earth's surface.

Tectonic Cycle

The creation, movement, and destruction of tectonic plates.

Rock Cycle

A worldwide rock recycling process driven by Earth's internal heat.

Hydrologic Cycle

The movement of water from the oceans to the atmosphere and back again, driven by solar energy.

Biogeochemical Cycle

The transfer or cycling of a chemical element through the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.

Uniformitarianism

The concept that processes we observe today also operated in the past.

Environmental Unity

The principle that one action causes others in a chain of actions and events.

Magnitude-Frequency Concept

The concept that the frequency of an event is generally inversely related to its magnitude.

Risk

The product of the probability of that event occurring multiplied by the consequences should it occur.

Adaptation

Options that may be taken to reduce exposure and vulnerability, such as insurance, evacuation, engineering to strengthen infrastructure and protect people, and land-use planning to avoid hazardous areas.

Mitigation

To reduce the effects of something and is often used by scientists, planners, and policy makers in describing disaster preparedness efforts.

Wicked Problem

Complex natural hazard management problems that are often resistant to clear problem definitions and easily identified solutions.

Natural Service Function

Benefits provided by a particular process, for example, flooding provides fertile floodplain soil, and volcanic eruption produces new land.