Question: Does the nature disasters help us in any ways , are useful?

Asked by emilianjon3 to Alice, Andi, Bas, Daniel, Rhian on 10 Mar 2015.

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  1. Photo: Andreas RudersdorfAndreas Rudersdorf
    answered on 10 Mar 2015:

    Hi emilianjon3!

    Natural disasters are indeed also “useful”!
    Whenever a natural process happens, we scientists observe it and try to understand how and why it happened. Because when we learn from disasters, we can start to protect ourselves from the next disaster. We better understand where earthquakes or landslides happen or where a volcano is active.

    We can then, for example, build better houses, or learn not to build a road on some steep hills. We invent new things like tsunami warning systems, so that thousands of people can find shelter before a next tsunami, for example. And we also learn how the ambulances can get to people very fast even if the main road is blocked.

    All the best,
    Andi

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  2. Photo: Alice MarzocchiAlice Marzocchi
    answered on 10 Mar 2015:

    Hi!

    Andi is definitely right! Through natural disasters we learn more and more about these phenomena and hopefully we can be more ready for them when they happen again. This is a tough way of learning, but it is indeed useful.

    Apart from this, I can’t think of any other ways in which natural disasters could be useful.
    Luckily, the natural environment is amazing at coping with these kind of events, and over time can make full recoveries or sometimes adapt and create new types of habitats. Unfortunately this is harder when the damage is in cities and people have to re-build what has been destroyed, especially when the disasters happen in porr and developing countries.

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  3. Photo: Rhian MearaRhian Meara
    answered on 11 Mar 2015:

    Have you ever seen photos of people living on the sides of volcanoes or near to big rivers and flood plains? these people live in very dangerous places, but they do so because the benefits of living there *might* outweigh the negatives.. for example, the soil on volcanoes and flood planes is really good for growing plants and vegetables in! this is because the materils that erupt from the volcano, or are in the flood waters bring lots of good nutrients to improve the soil in that area.

    volcanoes can also provide geothermal energy which is easy and very cheap to make! almost the whole of iceland is powered by geothermal energy! this wouldn’t be possible without volcanic eruptions! 🙂

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