Floods and Drought - Geography
Floods and Drought - Geography
Floods and Drought - Geography
The areas in red are where river floods have occurred this year.
Recent Floods.
Morocco has
experienced a flash flood recently, killing over 60 people. The flood has cause $1.75 million in damages. Another flood has recently hit Costa Rica, leaving thousands homeless.
Recent Droughts.
Australia has recently
been through drought conditions. The drought is occurring around Sydney. Fires have begun due to the dryness of the land. Ethiopia is also in a drought, and is expecting over 11 million people to be without food next year due to crop failures.
Destruction by Floods
Floods can cause major structural damage to
buildings, kill plants and animals, destroys habitats, and removes soil. Floods cause many deaths and drown many plants and crops, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Many nutrients in topsoil are brought downstream or deposited in the ocean.
Hazards of Floods
There are 6 categories to
tell how severe floods are in a region. They are depth of water, duration, velocity, rate of rise, frequency, and seasonality. Frequency is how often floods occur in an area, which depends greatly on the topography and climate. Seasonality is the time of year floods often occur.
Destruction by Droughts.
Droughts cause major damage to crops and
animals, especially if they occur during the regions growing season. During a drought not enough water is provided to support living things. Crops can decrease 10%20% during a drought. Droughts affect reservoirs, water supplies, water tables, and topsoil. Water levels drop, and topsoil becomes dry and less favourable to plants. Areas that are in a drought are more likely to have wildfires than other regions.
Other Facts
Floods account for 40% of all deaths caused by
natural disasters. In an average year, floods account for about 200 deaths and $2 billion of damage in the U.S. alone. In 1937 floods removed 300 million tons of topsoil in the Ohio Valley. The worlds longest drought occurred in Arica, Chile, from October 1903 to January 1918. No rain fell for over 14 years.
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