Peter Harrison Natural Disasters Dec.

4, 2013 Reflection

Reection Essay

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! There are several things I learned from taking the class Natural Disasters at Salt Lake Community College. I took the class to fulll the required Physical Science credit for my General Education classes. At the beginning of the class I knew very little about natural disasters and what caused them. However as the class went along I learned some very interesting and useful information. " ! Some of the information I learned from chapter one was the ve themes of geography. The ve themes are 1) Location 2) Place 3) Region 4) Movement 5) Human/Environment Interaction. I also learned the di#erence between disasters and hazards. I learned about map projections and the properties of maps. In chapter two I learned about the di#erent layers of the earth. We talked about the process of plate tectonics and some of the di#erent cycles, like the rock cycle. In chapter three I learned more about the earth and how it has both P and S waves. We talked about earthquakes and how they are caused. I learned the parts of the earthquake and how it is measured and classied. Another think I learned about was the di#erent types of faults. In chapter four I learned about Tsunamis and how a boat on the open ocean wont notice tsunamis waves because the frequency is large and amplitude is small. Tsunamis can also cause other hazards and disasters such as ooding, res, contaminated water, and disease. Chapter ve was about volcanoes and everything involved with them. I learned the di#erence between magma and lava. (Magma is in the earth and Lava is on the earths surface.) In class we talked about the di#erent types of volcanoes and what features they have. I also learned the two types of lava (Basaltic and Pahoehoe)." ! In chapter six the topic was ooding. I learned the the di#erent things a river holds. (Bed load, Suspended load, & Dissolved load). I learned about the two types of channels: braided and meandering. I then learned the di#erent parts of a river such as the meander scrolls and the oxbow lake. We talked about ash ooding and which areas are prone to ash ooding like St. George, Utah. We also covered dam construction and what that does to the water source. Although ooding can do much damage it can do a lot of good. One example is that it deposits minerals which enrich soil and land. Chapter seven was about mass wasting. Mass wasting includes avalanches, mud slides, etc. In this chapter I learned what the words permeable and saturation meant. Chapter eight was about subsidence and soil. We talked about the six levels of soil horizons and what they consist of. I learned what a soil chronosequence is and what saturated and unsaturated soil does. Another thing I learned about was

Karst Topography and stalactites and stalagmites. In chapter nine we covered a lot of things. Some of the things included: energy and its di#erent types (potential, kinetic, and heat), heat transfer by either conduction, convection, or radiation, and water vapor. I learned the structure of the atmosphere which includes the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and the thermosphere. When we talked about clouds I became educated about the three primary cloud forms which are cirri form (cirrus), stratiform (stratus), and cumuliform (cumulus). Chapter nine was very extensive so these are just a few of the things I learned. In chapter ten we talked about hurricanes and extratropical cyclones. I learned that the scale used to measure them is called the Sa$r-Simpson Scale. It classies hurricanes based of their wind speeds. Chapter 12 was about climate and climate change. This chapter was probably my favorite as I consider my self an avid environmentalist. We learned about the ways scientists measure climate and how good or bad these methods can be. I gained an understanding of the di#erence between weather and climate. (Weather is short term ie. day to day and climate is long term.) Chapter 13 was about res and what causes res. We talked about what a re needs to keep going and the benets a re can cause. We briey talked about chapter 14 which was Impacts and Extinctions. Like chapter 12 I found this chapter very interesting and wished we could have gone into more depth. As shown, the chapters covered a wide array of topics and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about all the things we covered. " ! In terms of my group project I learned so much about typhoon Haiyan. I learned about how it a#ected millions of people. It caused thousands of deaths and created millions of dollars of damage. The typhoon broke many records with its 200+ mph winds and huge wave surges. The typhoon was truly massive and it was very interesting to learn about something that happened so recently. I enjoyed working with my group partner, Adrianna and learned how to put together a good presentation. My work on the project, along with the vast amount of information I gained from the chapters we covered. (838 Words)

Peter Harrison Natural Disasters Dec. 4, 2013 Reflection