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Final Hazards Report

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          Thank you fellow bloggers for following me on this journey while I learned so much about the Dominican Republic! In this final blog post I will summarize the main natural hazards that occur in the DR, followed by my recommendations and further reflections. For many, the Dominican Republic is a tropical vacation destination, but for 11.12 million Dominicans it is home and its beauty and resources deserve to be preserved and protected. While this blog journey is coming to an end, our journey to combat climate change has only just begun! Links to an external sit       The Dominican Republic is a hurricane prone country and experiences an average of 2 hurricanes per year. This is largely because hurricanes develop near the equator over warm ocean waters and low air pressure. A more recent hurricane to hit the country was hurricane Fiona on September 19th of 2022. Hurricane Fiona began on September 14 of that year and touched down in the Dominican Republic 5 days later as a catego
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Coastal Erosion in the DR

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 Coastal Erosion in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic  Much of the Dominican Republic's coastline is in danger of erosion due to minimally regulated, tourism driven hotel development and the severe impacts of climate change such as sea level rise. While a major percentage of the countries GDP comes from tourism, an approximately $7 billion industry, by not preserving the iconic coastlines, there might not be much left for tourists to see or walk on decades from now.  The invasiveness of the hotels built so close to the coastline threatens coastal ecosystems that are crucial to minimizing erosion, such as mangrove swamps that act as a natural barrier from winds and storm surges. There was also extensive loss of coastland due to category 4 hurricane Irma and category 3 hurricane Maria in 2017. Researchers estimated that about 208 meters of beach were lost after the hurricanes.  The image above is of a Punta Cana business owner, Julio Rodriguez, in standing beside the market he used to r
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Extreme Weather in Brazil

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Brazil  Today we are changing paths a bit and talking about Brazil! Brazil is the largest country in South America, with a population of about 216 million people. According to news source Brazilian Report, Brazil is "the lightning capitol of the world". There is an average of 77.8 million lightning strikes in Brazil per year.  Rio De Janeiro, Brazil NASA's Earth Observatory describes the reason why so many thunderstorms occur in Brazil. The excessive warm temperatures and moist air lower in the atmosphere energize the storm as the warm air rises. We discussed in this weeks chapter that more severe thunderstorms occur when there is a high amount of water vapor and updraft of air. This is a normal phenomenon in Brazil. The image above comes from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). It represents a spacial distribution of annual water vapor flows in mm/yr due to vegetation before human impacts. We can see that a majority of
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Week 8 Mass Wasting Hazards

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Mass Wasting in the Dominican Republic  Hazard Level: HIGH Mass wasting as defined in Natural Hazards "refers to a rapid downslope movement of rock or soil as a more or less coherent mass." We commonly hear terms like "landslides" and "rockslides" which are referring to mass wasting.  There are various types of landslides such as; falling, sliding, slumping, or creep. These various types of landslides are defined by the movement of the slope and can be a combination of those types.  Landslides, as well as rockslides do not require a trigger to occur. Gravity plays a major role in landslides, in addition to the slope and topography, climate, vegetation, water and time.  Landslides are considered to be a high hazard level in the Dominican Republic. According to Think Hazard by the GFDRR, some major factors that lead to this high hazard in the Dominican Republic are the rainfall patterns, terrain slope, geology, land cover and earthquakes. All of this being
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Week 5 Volcanoes

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While considered moderate for seismic activity, the Dominican Republic does not have any significant volcanic hazards. The Dominican Republic is known to have 0 Holocene volcanoes which are volcanoes that have been active in the last 11,700 years. On the other hand, the Dominican Republic does have 3 Pleistocene volcanoes which are volcanoes that were once active in the Pleistocene Epoch or between 25 million and 11,700 years ago. These volcanoes include Dos Hermanos, San Juan, and Valle Nuevo.  It is significant to note that the Dominican Republic is located not too far east of the Pacific Ring of Fire. According to National Geographic, The Pacific Ring of Fire accounts for about 90% of all earthquakes and 75% of active volcanos found on Earth. This occurs because of the interactions between the Pacific plate and the less-dense surrounding plates. The Dominican Republic is found between the "R" and the "E" on the middle-right side of the map below.  Although quite
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Week 3 Seismicity

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  Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic According to the U.S. Embassy, seismicity of the Dominican Republic is considered moderate. The country has experienced approximately 1 earthquake per year and most recently experienced a magnitude 5.3 earthquake on February 1, 2023.  Following the earthquake on February 1st, the Emergency Operations Center (COE) activated a contingency plan.        The image above from the  World Bank Group  is a representation of earthquake risk. The scale ranges from a lighter green representing lower annual average losses (AAL) to a darker green representing a higher ratio of AAL. A factor of a higher AAL estimate is the proportion of vulnerable structures.  The image above from USGS is an interactive map showing the locations of the most recent earthquake impacting the Dominican Republic. The blue circle represents the magnitude 3.4 earthquake that occurred on February 7, 2023.  The United States Embassy in the Dominican Republic shares resources such as the U.
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Week 2 Plate Tectonics

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Plate Tectonics Tectonic plates are large yet varying in size, solid rock made of the Earth's oceanic and continental lithosphere. The image above provided by  The National Parks Service  shows Earth's plates including the kind of boundary they have and their name. Movement of tectonic plates directly leads to natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The size, frequency and magnitude of these events greatly depends on the type of plate boundary and location.  For instance, the Dominican Republic is located on the  Caribbean Tectonic Plate . The Caribbean plate is mostly an oceanic plate and is known to be moving eastward 22 mm/year.  Below is a chart of all the neighboring plates and their interaction with the Caribbean Plate:  The Dominican Republic has experienced 4 earthquakes so far in 2023, ranging from a magnitude of 2.7 on January 27th to a 5.0 on February 1st.   Resources: https://www.unavco.org/science/snapshots/solid-earth/2020/wang.html http://hike
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