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Showing posts from February, 2019

Volcanoes

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According to National Geographic , "a volcano is an opening in Earth’s crust that allows molten rock from beneath the crust to reach the surface. This molten rock is called magma when it is beneath the surface and lava when it erupts or flows from a volcano. Along with lava, volcanoes also release gases, ash, and rock. It’s a super hot mix that can be both incredibly destructive and creative." Though Nepal has a lot of mountains, non of them are volcanoes. The two neighboring countries India and China have some volcanoes. Red triangles show the four active intra-plate volcanoes in China The red triangles in the picture above extracted from ScienceDirect are Wudalianchi, Changbai, Tengchong, and Hainan. These are the most active volcanoes in China. The closest one to Nepal is the Tengchong volcano which last erupted in 1609. There is no earthquakes around the area recorded which means the volcano may not erupt anytime soon. Picture of Tengchong volcano fr...

Earthquakes in Nepal

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According to USGS ,"Earthquake is a term used to describe both sudden slip on a fault, and the resulting ground shaking and radiated seismic energy caused by the slip, or by volcanic or magmatic activity, or other sudden stress changes in the earth" Nepal faced a really big earthquake of magnitude 7.8 not too long ago. Talking from personal experience, as I was there during the time of the earthquake, not many people seemed to know what they were doing when the earthquake hit. Many more lives could have been saved if only people were educated about the safety majors and implemented them during the time of the earthquake. A report on the recent earthquake in Nepal talks about how "Earthquakes doesn't kill people, it's usually the buildings collapsing." Fault line passing through Nepal from USGS After the last earthquake, many people lost their houses. When people started rebuilding their houses, the government enforced a law for houses bigger than 2 f...

Nepal on the Plate Tectonic Map

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Nepal is a very small landlocked country sandwiched between two of Asias biggest countries, India and China. The tallest mountain in the world, Mt.Everest is located in the Himalayas of Nepal. In the picture below that I acquired from " Nepal: The amazon of Asia " ,you can see that the map of Nepal is kind of in a rectangular shape. Map Of Nepal Nepal lies right in the intersection of the Indian and Eurasian plate as you can see in the picture below retrieved from  ARCGIS education maps . There are many fault lines going throughout the country horizontally. Nepal is prone to very high magnitude earthquakes from time to time. The most recent earthquake in Nepal was 7.8 magnitude on April 2015 that killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000 people all over the country. Nepal in the Intersection of Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate marked in Red. Fun Fact: According to " How Mt.Everest was Formed ", the ultimate reason for the forming of Mt....

Difference between Natural disaster, Natural Hazard and catastrophes

Natural Hazards are natural process or events that only becomes hazardous when humans are on their path and is a potential threat to human life or property. Earthquakes and Volcanoes are great example of Natural hazards. Natural Disasters are slightly different. They are the effects of natural disasters on humanity. A natural hazard can be called a natural disaster if more than 10 people are killed because of the hazard,  more than 100 people are affected, there is a declared state of emergency or requires international assistance. Whereas, catastrophes are a massive disaster that requires significant expenditure of money and a long time for recovery. An example of a catastrophe is Hurricane Katrina which caused about $100 billion in damages in the U.S.