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Major Hazards Final

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Dominica Major Hazards   In Dominica, I would say the two main natural hazards that occur are floodings and earthquakes.    In Dominica, flooding happens very often because of tropical storms that create large amounts of rainfall which ends up flooding the land. Another way the island floods is by hurricanes because Dominica is an island and gets hit very hard by some hurricanes which cause mass flooding, and the flooding destroys structures on the island. These hurricanes also cause lots of wildlife and native plants and trees to die which harms the environment.   Earthquakes also affect Dominica in a big way because Dominica sits close to the margin of the Caribbean plate. Dominica experiences an above-average frequency of earthquakes. Over the course of the past year, Dominica has had 18 earthquakes, and so has averaged more than one a month. While they occur with some frequency, they are not typically large-magnitude events. This year the largest earthquake in Do...

Coastal Hazards in Dominica

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 Coastal erosion is a serious problem in Dominica because of all the storms and hurricanes. These storms are damaging to the beaches in Dominica because mass amounts of sand are washed away. This causes roadways to get destroyed and make the land need major improvements.   This has been a major problem in Dominica since the early 2000's. One of the major threats is shoreline change. This is causing shorelines to come all the way up to the houses built on the island. Some shorelines even coming up to the roads as you can see in the picture above.  https://research.fit.edu/media/site-specific/researchfitedu/coast-climate-adaptation-library/global/un-unep-unesco-undp-reports/UNESCO.-Dominica-Beach-Erosion- Practices.pdf http://pdf.wri.org/working_papers/coastal_capital_dominican_republic.pdf https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/caribbean/dominica

Dominica Extreme Weather

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Dominica's Extreme Weather  Dominica is known to have some pretty extreme rainfall on the island. The amount of rainfall that occurs often causes floods and damage to the land. In Dominica, the sea levels are rising which is not good for the island because that is causing more floods to happen on the island. The climate change that is happening in the world is not good for Dominica according to the global climate risk Dominica is ranked 25th out of 150 different countries. The storm rate in Dominica reached an all-time high in 2018 according to the charts provided by the Climate Change Knowledge Portal. Dominica is asking large nations to think of small countries like Dominica and how they are being affected by the global warming that is happening in the world.  Dominica has started to fight the global warming problems but is asking for more countries to join the fight. By 2030, Dominica is pushing to be resilient from these problems. Dominica is building structures that will ...

Mass Wasting

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 Dominica: Mass Wasting  Dominica is known to have lots of volcanic activity. This means that shakes often happen from the nine volcanoes on the island. When these shakes happen Dominica is prone to landslides which tear up lots of property on the island. These landslides have also killed people living on the island. The island has many landslides because the island is on a slope. It also has a climate known to have rainfall and wet soil which is known to cause landslides. The last major landslide in Dominica was on 01/16/2014 and there were two landslides that day. These landslides also happen from hurricanes and tropical storms which happened in Dominica in 1986 When Dominica was experiencing heavy storms and then rockslides began and took out massive numbers of trees used to help the island's population. These landslides happen all throughout the island but some places get different types of slides on the middle of the island you get soil slides because the rockslides happe...

Volcanic Activity

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 Dominica: Volcanic Activity      In Dominica, there are nine different active volcanos. The volcanos haven't had a major eruption since 1997 and before that was one in 1880 and they were steam blasts. Residents in Dominica are nervous because they have ground shakes and think there is going to be another big blow soon. When Dominica has ground shakes it causes landslides which destroy parts of the land. Dominica is also sitting on tectonic plates which could also trigger the volcanos to erupt. Dominica is at high risk due to the fact that they have nine active volcanos. https://caribbeanvolcanoes.com/dominica-geology/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dominica-volcano/volcanic-caribbean-island-of-dominica-shaken-by-explosion-of-steam-and-gas-idUSKBN26937R

Earthquakes

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 Dominica      Dominica experiences an above average frequency of earthquakes. Over the course of the past year Dominica has had 18 earthquakes, and so has averaged more than one a month. While they occur with some frequency they are not typically large magnitude events. This year the largest earthquake in Dominica was a 5.1 magnitude. Dominica is the most geologically active island in the Caribbean because it is close to the margin of the Caribbean plate. This coupled with the presence of live volcanoes makes the possibility of a major earthquake very real.   1,000 × 1,294 https://earthquaketrack.com/p/dominica/recent

Dominica: Plate tectonic boundaries

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  Dominica's plate tectonic problems! Dominica is positioned right next to multiple tectonic plates. The Caribian plate and the Atlantic plate collide which breaks down and produces materials that turn into fuel for the volcanoes. The edge of the Cariban plate is 50 miles away from Dominica. With the plates being so close and crashing into each other it causes a lot of seismic activity. Dominica gets hit hard on the east and south sides of the island and it is known to be a common occurrence.  Dominica has a common tectonic movement means that the land has changed quite a bit over time. For example, they have volcanoes and lots of high mountain ranges that were formed with tectonic movement. A lot of changes happened to the land during the "Pliocene" period when lots of lava buildup was forming structures. https://www.avirtualdominica.com/project/geology/ https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Current-tectonic-map-of-the-Caribbean-Plate-boundaries-from-Bird-66-Uncertainty-i...