Modifying the Environment
Today
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World Geography Unit 11, Lesson 01
Natural Disasters and Preparedness
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Earthquake Drill in Japan
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Natural Disaster Preparedness Drill
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Balancing on several tectonic plates, Japan is one of the
most earthquake-prone countries in the world, with
more than 130,000 quakes logged in 2005. Evan Osnos
wrote in The New Yorker, “To geologists, earthquakes
are a constant in the planet’s eternal becoming. To the
Japanese, they are simply a constant. In a given year,
there can be hundreds, usually barely discernible
micro-events. They rattle the pictures on the wall, the
china on the table, but they rarely stop the
conversation." Even so according to Yomiuri Shimbun
survey, 78 percent of Japanese worry about a major
earthquake. [Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker,
March 28, 2011]
Living with earthquakes in Japan, Facts and Details.com
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Effects of natural disasters (preparedness)
• Railway systems automatically shut down
during an earthquake
• Strict building codes are put in place for new
construction
• School children participate in preparedness
drills
• Earthquake and tsunami warning systems on
television
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Detection Monitoring Systems
Earthquake warning
system uses
broadcasting stations,
mobile phones, and
television to warn
people.
J-Alert uses satellites
and media to alert
people through a loud
speaker
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Average annual population affected and killed by natural disasters, world
regions, 2001-2010
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Three Gorges Dam
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3 Gorges Dam
Statistics
•
Type of Dam: Gravity
•
Materials: Concrete
•
Location: The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, longest river in Asia, 3,900 miles long
•
Completed: 2006; fully operational 2011
•
Cost: $25 billion, estimates vary
•
Benefits: decrease flooding, improved shipping, hydroelectric power
•
Impact: costs may outweigh its benefits, large expanse of land was cleared to create a
reservoir, 1.5 million people displaced, cultural sites underwater, endangering animal
habitat
•
Alternative: building smaller dams and using newer technology to produce energy
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…., a key lesson of the Three Gorges
Project is that dams can have serious
geological impacts. The fluctuating
water levels of the reservoir on the
Yangtze have destabilized hundreds
of miles of slopes and triggered
massive landslides. Most of the
projects discussed under the new
Five-Year Plan would be built in
China’s mountainous Southwestern
region, which is seismically active.
The devastating earthquake of 2008
in Sichuan Province, which damaged
hundreds of dams may have been
triggered by a reservoir, further
illustrated the risk of building
hydropower projects on fault lines.
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Landslide on the Three
Gorges reservoir
Statement from the Embassy of the
People’s Republic of China in the U.S.
About 1 million people will be relocated owing to the
construction of the project. The government has
attached great importance to the issue and decided to
appropriate large sums of money for the resettlement
program. The guiding principle of the program is that
the life of the relocatees can only be improved. For this
purpose, the government has adopted developmentoriented resettlement, in other words, to combine
resettlement with local economic development. The
relocatees find higher-paying jobs in the newly set up
businesses, which are usually located within the same
country or city. Therefore, they feel quite at home and
enjoy a better living in their new homes.
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Land Reclamation
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Taken from Article: South Korea Undergoes Controversial
Wetlands Reclamation Project
Environmentalists say South Korea could be heading
towards a major ecological blunder as it begins a multibillion dollar land reclamation project about seven
times the size of Manhattan that the country believes
will lift its economy.South Korea’s Saemangeum land
reclamation project uses a 20.5 mile sea dyke to
reclaim an area of 155 sq miles, turning coastal
tidelands that are key feeding areas for globally
threatened birds into land for factories, golf courses
and water treatment plants.Park Hyoungbae, an official
with the Saemangeum development authority project,
said the reclamation was not about protecting the
environment, but about economic development.
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Land reclamation project underway in Bingzhou Peninsula in
China
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Bullet Trains
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Japan’s main islands are served by a network of bullet trains. They are called
shinkansen and operated by Japan Railways.
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Bullet Trains
Fast Facts
• Born in 1964, routes opened in 1972
• Can travel up to 130 m /hr.
• Safe and efficient- rides more like an airplane
• Cost effective
• Carry 120,000 passengers a day
• Train runs on narrow-gauge track for faster speed
• No major accidents
• Commutes between major cities in Japan (Tokyo and
Osaka and other cities)
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Bullet Train line in Japan
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