Week 8 Mass Wasting Hazards


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 said, rapid climate change leading to changes in precipitation patterns will only make this more of a concern. 


A more recent, likely, climate change-driven hurricane, Fiona took place in September of 2022. This storm was considered a major category 3+ storm that lead to extreme damage in the islands in the Atlantic. Hurricane Fiona caused heavy rainfall, flash flooding, and mudslides in the Dominican Republic. The impacts of the storm included severe flooding which left towns isolated, extensive damage to homes and buildings, power outages, loss of life, restricted access to clean water and more. 



NASA Landslide Susceptibility Map



What's being done to prevent further loss?

NASA, Servicio Geológico Nacional (DR), and Oficina Nacional de Meteorología (DR) have joined forces to provide reliable disaster monitoring. This includes creating landslide susceptibility maps to help predict future landslide activity. The Landslide Hazard Assessment For Situational Awareness (LHASA) combined with the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is a model derived from slope, elevation, and topography from shuttle radar as well as rainfall data to identify high hazard susceptibility maps for landslides.  

Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA)

CDEMA is a regional inter-governmental agency that prioritizes immediate disaster response, as well as community disaster preparedness, climate change disaster risk reduction and much more. 







Resources

This video  was published by The New York Times and shows the extensive damage from Hurricane Fiona.

https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/what-we-do/projects/mapping_landslide_susceptibility_and_exposure_in_the_dominican_republic_using_nasa_earth_observations

https://reliefweb.int/report/dominican-republic/dominican-republic-hurricane-fiona-emergency-plan-action-epoa-dref-ndeg-mdrdo014

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/hurricane-fiona-slams-dominican-republic-after-leaving-puerto-rico-mostly-2022-09-19/

https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/earth-orbit-hurricane-fiona-leaves-wake-of-destruction

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/hurricane-fiona-puerto-rico-live-updates/

https://thinkhazard.org/en/report/72-dominican-republic/LS

https://caricom.org/institutions/caribbean-disaster-emergency-management-agency-cdema/

Comments

  1. ElianaMarch 19, 2023 at 12:39 PM

    Hello! It seems like our countries are polar opposites when it comes to mass wasting. In the Netherlands, my country, mass wasting is considered a very low level hazard. It’s good to hear that the Dominican Republic is actively monitoring instances of mass wasting to prevent damages that could be inflicted by future landslide activity.

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