GLG 110 Exam 2 (Take-Home)

Name:________________ Date:_______________________

Instructions: Read all the questions. Answer only 5 questions! Each answer is worth 10 points; total number of points is 100. Exam is due back on 11-02-09, no later, no exceptions! Good luck!

1. You are a planner working for a community that is expanding into the headwater portion of a drainage basin. You are aware of the effects of urbanization on flooding and wish to make recommendations to avoid some of these effects. Outline a plan of action.
2. You are aware that on the institutional level the perception of flooding is adequate. However, at the individual level the situation is not so clear. How could you develop a plan to communicate the potential of flood hazard to people in your community?
3. You are working for a county flood-control agency that has been channelizing streams for many years. The preferable method has been to use bulldozers to straighten and widen the channel. Recently your agency has been criticized for causing extensive environmental damage. You have developed new plans of channel restoration that you wish to have implemented for a stream maintenance program. Describe what you might do (devise a plan of action) to convince the official in charge of the maintenance program that your ideas will improve the urban stream environment and help reduce the potential of flood hazard.
4. In this chapter we established that variables such as climate, topography, vegetation, water, and time are important in affecting the nature and occurrence of landslides. Write down as many links as you can between these various processes to discover how they might be interrelated. For example, climate is obviously related to water and vegetation on slopes.
5. Your consulting company is hired by the national park or parks in your area to estimate the future risk of landsliding. Outline a plan of attack of what must be done to achieve this objective.
6. Why do you think that many people are not easily swayed by technical information concerning hazards such as landslides? Assume you have been hired by a community to make the citizens more aware of the landslide hazard in their areas, which has a lot of steep topography. Outline a plan of action and defend it.
7. Assume you are the person in your family, dormitory, or other living unit responsible for developing a plan to minimize the earthquake hazard in the residence. What would be the major components of the plan you employ and how would you go about explaining the plan to others?
8. Assume you are working for the Peace Corps and are in a developing country where most of the homes are built out of un-reinforced blocks or bricks. There has not been a large damaging earthquake in the area for several hundred years, but earlier there were several earthquakes that killed thousands of people. How would you present the earthquake hazard to the people living where you are working? What steps might be taken to reduce the hazard?
9. You live in an area that has a significant earthquake hazard. There is ongoing debate as to whether or not an earthquake warning system should be developed. Some residents are worried that false alarms will cause a lot of problems and others point out that the response time may not be very long. What are your views on this? Do you think it is a responsibility of public officials to finance an earthquake warning system, assuming such a system is feasible? What are potential implications if a warning system is not developed and a large earthquake results in damage that could have been partially avoided with a warning system in place?
10. While looking through some old boxes in your grandparent’s home, you find a sample of volcanic rock collected by your great-grandfather. No one knows where it was collected. You take it to school and your geology professor tells you that it is a sample of andesite. What might you tell your grandparents about the type of volcano it probably came from, its geologic environment, and the type of volcanic activity that likely produced it?
11. A country in Central America has intentions of developing a moderately large city approximately 30 km from a prominent volcano. Your company has been hired to evaluate the volcanic hazard. Outline a plan of action that would ultimately produce a report discussing the hazards at the site.
12. Using your report of the volcanic-hazard analysis for Question 11, how would you evaluate the specific risk at the site?