Public Response to Hurricane Probability Forecasts

Interviewers presented 400 residents of Pinellas County, Florida, with sets of hypothetical hurricane threats to assess the effect of hurricane probability forecasts and other risk indicators on public response to the threats. Evacuation notices from local officials were more important than other threat variables, and hurricane probabilities did little to modify that effect. Respondents appeared to comprehend and use the probability information reasonably. Evacuation behavior in actual hurricane threats is consistent with the survey findings.     

Earth,Wind, and Fire: Wildfire Risk Perceptions in a Hurricane-Prone Environment

Wildfire is one of several potential disturbances that could have extraordinary impacts on individuals and communities in fire-prone areas. In this article we describe disturbance risk perceptions from interviews with residents in three Florida communities that face significant wildfire and hurricane risk. Although they live in areas characterized by emergency managers as having high wildfire risk and many participants have direct experience with wildfire, residents tended to share high hurricane and low wildfire risk perceptions. The different perceptions of risk seem linked to several factors: direct hurricane experience, different scales of impact, the local “hurricane culture,” effectiveness of local ordinances and development patterns, perceived predictability of the event, and perceived ability to control the event. This study shows that residents may perceive and act to reduce risk for one disturbance in relation to their perceptions, concern, and actions for another.     

Physical effects of hurricane bere upon Funafuti atoll,Tuvalu

Detailed aerial photograph analysis of the effects of hurricane Bebe (21 October 1972) on Funafuti atoll using ‘before and after’ photos plus ground truthing give a detailed picture of wind and water motions during passage of the cyclone. Interpretation of damage to coconut palms, motu (cay) and reef‐flat structures together with other directional indicators show that hurricane Bebe passed to the east of the atoll. Average wind and water‐flow directions were substantially different; wind directions changed during the cyclone's movement while wave and surge generated water flows remained more constant. A model showing wind and water motion associated with the storm is presented.     

Combining Surge and Wind Risk from Hurricanes Using a Copula Model: An Example from Galveston,Texas

Consideration of climate-related impacts on coasts is important to ensure readiness for disaster response. Local risk of storm surge and strong winds from hurricanes affecting Galveston, Texas, is quantified using a bivariate copula model fit to observed data. The model uses a two-dimensional Archimedean copula. Parametric uncertainty (5th and 95th percentiles) is quantified using a Monte Carlo procedure. The annual probability of a hurricane producing winds of at least 50 ms^?1 and a surge of at least 4 m is 1.7 percent with a 95 percent confidence interval of (1.33, 1.78) percent. The methodology can be extended to include inland flooding and can be applied elsewhere with available information.     

Debris Avalanches as an Erosional Agent in the Appalachian Mountains

Abstract

The article examines erosional effects produced by catastrophic forces. Avalanche scars, sediments, and stream course changes caused by hurricane Camille in Virginia in 1969 were studied in order to determine erosional results of the hurricane, including previously unexposed bedrock, and to gain understanding of the mechanics of small drainage basin development and the process of fluvial attrition of uplands.     

Vulnerability to Hurricane Damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast Since 1950

We study hurricane risk on the U.S. Gulf Coast during 1950‐2005, estimating the wind damage and storm surge from every hurricane in this extended period. Wind damage is estimated from the known path and wind speeds of individual storms and calibrated to fit actual damage reports for a sample of Gulf Coast storms. Storm surge is estimated using the SLOSH model developed by NOAA. These models provide the first comprehensive overview of the hurricane storm hazard as it has been experienced over a fifty‐six‐year period. We link the estimated damage with information on the population and specific socio‐demographic components of the population (by age, race, and poverty status). Results show that white, young adult, and nonpoor populations have shifted over time away from zones with higher risk of wind damage, while more vulnerable population groups–the elderly, African Americans, and poor—have moved in the opposite direction. All groups have moved away from areas with high risk of storm surge since 1970. But in this case, perhaps because living near the water is still perceived as an amenity, those at highest risk are whites, elderly, and nonpoor households. Here exposure represents a trade‐off between the risk and the amenity.     

Hurricane 07B in the Godavari Delta, Andhra Pradesh, India: vulnerability, mitigation and the spatial impact

Few hurricane impact studies provide robust spatial parameters of damage or relate geographical patterns of destruction accurately to storm trajectories or agencies. A detailed spatial analysis is, therefore, presented of the destruction caused by tropical hurricane 07B which made landfall on 6/7 November 1996 over the Godavari Delta region, Andhra Pradesh, eastern India. Patterns of destruction by storm surge, wind and flood water are quantitatively mapped for death tolls, house destruction and agricultural damage using local administrative ( mandal ) data bases. Results show that most impact occurred near the coast, but a well-defined path of destruction across the central part of the delta can be identified. Such mapping studies fail to indicate the types of individuals and social groups most affected by the storm hazard and their response to it. An investigation of landowning farmers, female migrant rural labourers and fishing communities in the delta shows that poverty and social ordering in Indian society puts differential limits on the risk reduction abilities of individuals and social groups in the face of the cyclone hazard. The paper also demonstrates that 'top down' institutional measures to reduce the effects of storm damage such as those introduced in the aftermath of hurricane 07B, including early storm warning and evacuation procedures and rehabilitation programmes, remain largely ineffective. It is suggested that the introduction of more 'bottom up' community-based programmes which seek to improve the risk awareness and risk avoiding abilities of affected individuals and groups would be much more beneficial. The case material on hurricane 07B and its effects are placed in context by reviewing and updating long and medium-term time series records of storm frequencies and impacts in the Bay of Bengal and particularly along the eastern coastline of India.     

Factors controlling the survival of coastal dunes during multiple hurricane impacts in 2004 and 2005: Santa Rosa barrier island, Florida

Santa Rosa Island is an 85 km-long, wave-dominated low-lying barrier island situated along the northwestern Florida coast, facing the Gulf of Mexico. The entire island was severely impacted by Ivan, a strong category 3 hurricane that made landfall about 45 km to the west in September of 2004. Ten months later in July of 2005, Dennis, another category 3 hurricane, made landfall about 30 km east of the western tip of the island. Santa Rosa Island is characterized by well-developed but relatively low dunefields, described in this paper as incipient and established dunes, based on the presence of grassy and woody types of vegetation, respectively. The dunes were severely eroded by the two hurricanes. This paper investigates the factors controlling the regional-scale destruction and survival of the dunefields.Dune survival is controlled by: 1) hurricane characteristics, including intensity, duration, and frequency, and 2) morphological parameters including width of the barrier island, height and width of the dunefields, vegetation type, distance of the dunes to the ocean, and continuity of the dunefields. Three processes of dune destruction are described including, from most to least severe, inundation, overwash, and scarping. The interaction of all the above factors determines the different dune responses to the storm impacts. In general, the extensive and densely woody vegetated dunefields near the bay-side shoreline survived the storms, while the discontinuous dunes with grassy vegetation near the Gulf shoreline were almost completely destroyed.     

新奥尔良飓风灾难与华南沿海台风暴潮

分析了新奥尔良的地理环境,概述了卡特里娜飓风与丽塔飓风及其对新奥尔良的影响.简述了华南沿海的台风暴潮灾害情况,提出了新奥尔良飓风灾难对华南沿海的几点警示:(1)加强提高防御台风暴潮灾害的认识;(2)保护好沿海抗御台风暴潮的"前沿阵地;(3)加强和完善防台风暴潮应急预案;(4)应对台风暴潮要充分考虑全球环境变化.     

福建省花卉产业发展SWOT分析及对策研究

福建省的花卉产业发展存在着一定的优势(Strengths)、劣势(Weaknesses)、机遇(Opportunities)、威胁(Threats)因素,优势和劣势、机遇和威胁之间也存在着相互转化的互动关系,利用福建省近几年的花卉产业发展资料,运用SWOT法分别对福建省花卉产业发展的优势、劣势、机会和威胁进行具体分析,结合福建省的实际情况,在花卉生产管理、区域特色优势品种规划、花卉生产和经营思路、花卉基地、花卉协会的行业指导、花卉发展环境等方面提出了一些的具体对策和建议.     

Resilient Landscapes: The Reconstruction of Southeastern Connecticut Following the 1938 Hurricane

Following the 1938 hurricane that damaged much of the New England coast, New London, Connecticut, responded like most communities by leveraging federal and state funds to rebuild and augment engineered mitigation structures. Eighty years of subsequent storm experience, however, illustrates that a small number of nonstructural mitigation projects, especially private property acquisitions, have had significant long-term effects on New London's coastal resiliency, especially in the Ocean Beach neighborhood. Archival research identifies that these nonstructural mitigation projects were not initially intended to reduce hurricane or flooding risk but were aimed at removing structures determined to be public nuisances and reducing fire hazard. Therefore, New London's post-1938 mitigation experience underscores how community-scale mitigation planning following one disaster can greatly affect the outcome of future disasters. Analytically, New London's experience offers a compelling case study to critically compare two competing environmental mitigation approaches following the same disaster and to offer insight into the environmental legacies of both.     

HONDURAS: WHEN THE SAINTS ARRIVE

ABSTRACT. Hurricane Mitch, the most deadly hurricane to strike the Western Hemisphere in two centuries, killed at least 10,000 people in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador and left tens of thousands homeless. Some needed food; others, medical attention. Americans, Europeans, Mexicans, and others almost immediately responded to the widespread devastation by sending large donations of food, clothing, and medicine. Six weeks after Mitch struck the Honduran mainland, the author traveled to Honduras with the aim of photographing the physical damage and its effect on humans. In San Pedro Sula he was sidetracked by the issue of where the refugees were being housed and whether they were receiving the donations that had been sent on their behalf. This essay narrates that search and what he found.     

Linking hurricane landfalls,precipitation variability,fires, and vegetation response over the past millennium from analysis of coastal lagoon sediments,southwestern Dominican Republic

We reconstructed the late-Holocene environmental history of a coastal lagoon in semi-arid southwestern Hispaniola through multiproxy analysis of a sediment core, including pollen, macroscopic and microscopic charcoal, loss-on-ignition analysis (LOI), stable isotope analysis, bulk density, and magnetic susceptibility. Four chronological accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates indicated that our core represents the past ~1000 years. We interpreted ten hurricanes events over the past millennium from high-resolution geological proxies, LOI data, and ostracod valve stable oxygen isotope data, thus producing the first long record of hurricanes from the Dominican Republic. Geological proxies indicated a high-energy event abruptly changed the ecosystem state of our core site from a shallow mangrove wetland to a lacustrine environment ~330 cal yr BP. We interpret the driver of that event to be the landfall of a strong hurricane that initiated lowland flooding, mangrove mortality, and subsequent peat collapse at the core site. Pollen data indicated that during the relatively moist Medieval Warm Period (MWP), hurricanes led to temporary declines in tropical dry forest taxa that recovered within several decades following disturbance. By comparison, during the relatively arid Little Ice Age (LIA), when precipitation was highly variable in the circum-Caribbean, closely spaced hurricanes seemed to delay forest recovery. Sedimentary charcoal concentrations revealed increased fire activity after inferred hurricane landfalls in the MWP, providing evidence of a link between enhanced biomass and fuel availability during moister periods and burning in recently disturbed dry forests and scrub of our semi-arid study region. Our interpretations of increased aridity and precipitation variability, indicated by alternating thin layers of microbial mats with evaporite layers, along with more frequent hurricanes from ~330 cal yr BP to present, generally agree with other sedimentary records from the circum-Caribbean, and may be linked to a more southerly position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone during the LIA.     

Patterns and Controls of Hurricane-Caused Forest Damage: A Landscape-Scale Analysis of Treefall Direction Following Hurricane Katrina∗

To clarify broad-scale patterns and controls of treefall directionality from Hurricane Katrina, we examined fall directions across a 4,500 km² landscape mosaic in southern Mississippi using georeferenced, planar-rectified aerial photographs. Analyses using directional statistics, measures of local spatial autocorrelation, and general linear modeling indicated that treefall was significantly directional for nearly all of our locations and constrained primarily by mesoscale surface wind directions and landscape setting. None of our plots exhibited fall angles consistent with damage caused by wind reversals following the passage of the storm or by microbursts or tornadoes spawned by the hurricane. When coupled with results from other studies focused on hurricane-caused damage, these results suggest that it is possible to develop empirical, landscape-scale models of wind impacts or stand vulnerability using basic site information (e.g., topography, soils), biotic conditions (e.g., land cover, forest attributes), and generalized, but readily available, estimates of surface wind flow patterns.     

Tropical Storm Gamma and the Mosquitia of eastern Honduras: a little-known story from the 2005 hurricane season

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was unprecedented in terms of storm activity in the United States, Mexico, Central America and Caribbean. Given the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Honduran Mosquitia sparked little attention despite being hit by two hurricanes and a tropical storm in 2005. This article recounts the history of these storms in the Afro-Caribbean community of Batalla, drawing from public weather advisories and testimony of local residents obtained through participatory research. We contextualise this local history with results from the first paleotempestological study undertaken in the Mosquitia to shed light on long-term risk of catastrophic storms in the region and to demonstrate the value of integrating these two research approaches. Our findings contribute to recent ethnographic research on hazards by describing how a coastal people understand and respond to tropical cyclones and how landscape change influences the vulnerability of a coastal area. Although residents have not witnessed a storm as intense as those documented in the paleotempestological record, their knowledge and perceptions show how tropical cyclones can be disasters while leaving behind no sedimentary records. The paleotempestological evidence, however, reminds us that catastrophic hurricanes have struck the Mosquitia in the past and will do so again in the future. Understanding the interactions between contemporary human perceptions and responses and long-term hurricane risk provides insight for emergency managers and local stakeholders to better prepare for such a catastrophic event.     

Demographic consequences of chronic anthropogenic disturbance on three populations of the endangered globose cactus Coryphantha werdermannii

Cacti are thought to be highly vulnerable to chronic anthropogenic disturbance (CAD). To assess its effects, we modeled the dynamics of three populations of the endangered cactus Coryphantha werdermannii exposed to different intensities of disturbance. Because no seedlings germinated and survived in the less-disturbed site, we analyzed two different scenarios: If the same, average germination probability was used for all sites, the population growth rates (λ) decreased with disturbance, but λ remained unchanged if a very low germination probability was assigned to the less-disturbed site and the observed probabilities were used for the remaining populations. Retrospective analysis showed that different demographic processes affected λ as a result of increasing disturbance: The unsuccessful establishment of seedlings in the preserved site diminished λ. The damage caused by livestock to reproductive structures in the site with intermediate disturbance was responsible for a reduction in λ. In the most disturbed site, the reduced individual growth rates that seemingly resulted from land degradation caused a decrease in λ. No simple management strategy can be proposed because different threats require attention depending on disturbance intensity. CAD had both positive and negative effects on λ, conferring this species with a certain degree of tolerance.     

全球暖化问题的反思

阐述了近年来出现的破纪录高温现象,列举了全球暖化的实例证据;指出了影响全球气温变化的重要事件;从温室效应方面讨论地表温度变化和全球暖化问题;从南太平洋海平面的变化来证明全球暖化是否存在的问题;从热岛效应出发论证了全球暖化与土地利用间的关系;用实例和历史数据讨论有关全球暖化的6个威胁问题.提出了几个值得深思的问题,认为很难令人相信全球暖化有愈来愈烈的趋势.全球暖化是否存在?目前的资料并不充分.全球暖化与热岛效应的影响有着密切的关系,气候变迁的灾难说法尚有许多疑义.     

Wetland Preservation in Australia: The Administrative and Policital Threats

The wetlands in Australia are of great physical,chemical and biological variety due to the continent's age,geological history and climate.The traditional physical and biological threats remain as the main challenges for wetland preservation in Australia.However,it has been increasingly recognized that the immediate survival of wetlands are being affected by more subtle threats,such as administrative and political threats.This paper identifies these non-physical threats and discusses how and why they have become the major barriers for sustainable wetland preservation in Australia.Finally,this paper calls for more practical policies and solutions to be implemented for sustainable wetland preservation in Australia.     

Catastrophic hurricane history revealed by organic geochemical proxies in coastal lake sediments: a case study of Lake Shelby,Alabama (USA)

We developed a new method for reconstructing millennia-long hurricane records from coastal environments that uses Organic Geochemical Proxies (OGPs) of organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations and their δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N compositions. The new method is independent of presence/absence of sand layers and improves significantly the severe-storm history resolution. The subject of this investigation is a 1.5 m long sediment core raised at 2.8 m water depth from the center of Lake Shelby, Alabama, a freshwater lake located approximately 250 m from the Gulf of Mexico, from which an overwash sand-layer based record was previously derived. The core contains two distinct sediment units; an upper 62 cm thick, fine-grained, organic-rich lacustrine sapropel (gyttja) that shows no visible structures except one sand lamina at 23.7 cm depth, and an underlying 90 cm thick, organic-poor lagoon/estuary clay unit. The sapropel unit was deposited over a 682 ± 30 cal year time interval (1320–2002 A.D.) with a mean sedimentation rate of 0.79 ± 0.04 mm/year. Lake Shelby’s water column exhibits two contrasting states based on water chemistry surveys (i) an “isolated”, stratified, mode under calm weather conditions with a relatively low trophic state, and (ii) a “flooded” mode occurring during storm surges when nutrient-rich seawater floods the lake. Statistically significant δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N positive excursions in organic matter, up to maximum values of −25 (‰ PDB) and 4 (‰ Air N₂), respectively, are interpreted as geochemical responses to the marine intrusions that fertilize the lake, increase light availability, and cause eutrophication spikes. Detailed OGPs analyses crossing a sand layer that offers visual evidence of a catastrophic hurricane overwash event at 1717 A.D. exhibit large δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N positive shifts bounded by rapid returns to base values, thus confirming the validity of the hurricane identification by the OGPs model. Our data indicate that 11 catastrophic hurricanes hit the Alabama coast over the past 682 years with a rough recurrence interval of one in 62 years.