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Climate Change Refugees The village of Shishmaref, located on Sarichef Island in Northern Alaska, is currently home to nearly 600 people. Inupiat people have inhabited this island for at least 400 years. Though summer temperatures average only 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 Celsius) and the Chukchi Sea around the island is frozen from November to June, Shishmaref is both the ancestral home and way of life for its citizens. In 2002, the residents of Shishmaref were faced with a difficult decision, as Sarichef Island is eroding away. This erosion has caused both commercial properties and family homes to collapse into the sea. If they stayed, the people would be forced further and further back, and would ultimately run out of livable space. Some residents are adamant that they will stay in their homes no matter what, despite a community vote to relocate. The erosion that threatens the residents of Shishmaref is attributed to climate change. Rougher seas are eroding the island significantly more than neighboring islands. In 1997, a severe storm eroded about ten meters of shoreline away completely. Additional storms further erode the northern shore by about one meter per year. Fourteen homes and the National Guard Armory have already been relocated. Permafrost degradation also contributes to the erosion. As the permafrost in the soil thaws, the ground becomes unstable. It is more susceptible to erosion from storms and freshwater runoff. Infrastructure, such as roads and buildings, can also be damaged from permafrost degradation as the ground sinks. Shishmaref has tried to mitigate the effects of climate change on their home, so that they might be able to stay, but it has not worked. Even armoring the sandy shoreline with a 2700 foot (850 meter) long barrier has not been successful. Relocating their village is the residents’ only long-term option. As of 2014, the village is still on the island. Relocation is expensive, and agreeing on a new location is contentious. Worldwide, as many as 150 million people may be directly threatened by climate change. For residents of large industrialized cities along flooding shores, relocating may be a necessary, albeit unpleasant, choice. For millions of others, though, this is not a feasible option. Those that continue the cultural traditions of their people, especially those on tiny, isolated islands, have contributed least to climate change and yet are affected by it the most. -JB Sources: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/human-shishmaref.shtml http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/14/shishmaref-alaska-climate-change-relocation_n_6296516.html http://www.cakex.org/case-studies/relocating-native-village-shishmaref-alaska-due-coastal-erosion http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/alaska.html http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/12/03/shishmaref.alaska.climate.change/index.html?eref=rss_tech http://commerce.state.ak.us/cra/DCRAExternal/Community/Details/c075af9a-a51e-47bb-9dfb-60fd2513da0a

earthstory

Storytelling Tradition Saved Lives in Boxing Day Tsunami Memorials to those who died in the tsunami on Indonesia’s Banda Aceh do more than offer remembrance; they also provide an education tool to teach school children about tsunamis and to recognize the warning signs. After the Boxing Day earthquake, many people went to the beaches when the waters receded instead of going to higher ground, which cost them their lives. It is a much different story on Indonesia’s island of Simeulue, where 7 people died out of a population of around 70,000. Simeulue is located just 50 kilometers from the epicenter where the 9.2 magnitude earthquake hit. The island received no warning that the tsunami was coming. Simeulue has suffered through earthquakes and tsunamis in the past, and an oral tradition called “smong” developed. Grandparents in particular teach their grandchildren the smong which concludes with, “If a strong tremor occurs, and if the sea withdraws soon after, run to the hills, for the sea will soon rush ashore.” The people on Simeulue’s coast remembered this lesson and ran to the island’s hills, thereby saving their lives. It is hoped that educating school children in Banda Aceh will ensure that they too will know what to do if a tsunami ever happens again. - RE Photo Credit: Tsunami damage in Sumatra by U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Philip A. McDaniel http://bit.ly/16QHYrM Read More: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30542317?OCID=fbasia http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001831/183133e.pdf

earthstory

RED TIDE OFF THE EASTERN COAST OF AUSTRALIA A form of red algae spread across Australia’s eastern coast in December 2012, turning the water red and forcing ten beaches, including Sydney’s Bondi Beach, to close. Aerial footage showed the algal bloom spread through the states of New South Wales and Victoria. The bloom glowed blue at night, which earned it the nickname ‘sea sparkle’. Algal blooms such as these occur when unicellular organisms, in this case dinoflagellates called noctiluca scintillans, reproduce quickly under optimal conditions. These blooms typically occur when currents bring cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. Algal blooms can be harmful to fish. When the algae die they sink in the shallow coastal water; when they decompose they take oxygen from the water column, leading to temporary low oxygen zones. Depending on the amount of oxygen depletion, marine animals can die. Some dinoflagellates are associated with saxitoxin, which is a shellfish toxin that has been known to cause paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans. The algal bloom off the coast of eastern Australia had a fishy odour and irritated the skin and eyes of some people, but was otherwise not harmful to humans. The photo shows a girl checking out the red algal bloom in the water at Clovelly Beach in Sydney. -TEL http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121129-algae-bloom-australia-science/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20121202news-redocean&utm_campaign=Content http://phys.org/news/2012-11-australia-beaches-reopen-red-algal.html Image: Newspix / Rex Features

earthstory

When the waters retreated Today is December 26, 2014. I had to write out the date because the day after Christmas is locked in my memory from what happened 10 years ago. Just before 8:00 a.m. local time, the earth’s crust off the western coast of the island of Sumatra broke. The crack started near Sumatra and propagated a huge distance to the North, over 2000 kilometers. The ground shook violently and so much energy was released that the entire planet bent and swelled for days afterwards. The incredible shaking was only the smallest part of the disaster. On the floor of the ocean where the crack formed, areas where the crack reached the surface were pushed upward, in some cases by as much as twenty meters. That rupture lifted up the ocean waters into a giant pile that the waters flowed away from as a series of giant waves – a tsunami. A few minutes after the shaking stopped, this spot was hit by waves tens of meters high. The upper image shows Banda Aceh, the closest community to the quake’s epicenter, after the quake in 2004. The tsunami wave was a slow-motion disaster. It moved across the Indian Ocean over several hours, striking people in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India who received no warning. It even hit the continent of Africa with enough force to cause damage and deaths on the other side of the ocean. Over 225,000 people were killed, making the quake estimated to be the 5th deadliest earthquake in recorded human history. Much has changed in the 10 years since this disaster. As you see in the second photo, taken recently on the same spot, many communities have rebuilt from the damage. The debris and pollution spread by the tsunami has mostly washed away. That day likely still leaves scars on the survivors and memories of those who were lost, but the outward scars seen around the ocean in the following days have mostly healed. The earth science community and the world also were changed by the tsunami. In 2004, tsunami science was thought of as important, but there wasn’t a recent event to spur work in that field. By some estimates, since 2004 the number of researchers working on tsunamis has multiplied by a factor of 10. Those scientists have made some remarkable findings, such as ways to build structures able to survive the waves, predictions of tsunami heights depending on earthquake locations and energies, and how to interpret geologic records of tsunami as evidence of earthquakes across the ocean. But even with that progress, the overtopping of sea walls by the Japanese tsunami in 2011 still shows that we have work to do. The most tangible evidence of a response to the 2004 quake can be found in tsunami preparation. In 2004, the only tsunami warning office in the world was the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. It had a staff of 8, would close for part of the day, and had access to 6 tsunami-monitoring buoys. Today, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has a staff of 15, is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and controls a network of 60 tsunami-monitoring buoys. The Pacific system also helped Australia, India, and Indonesia establish a warning system in the Indian Ocean, which opened in 2006 and is gradually improving its capabilities and being linked to at-risk coastal communities. Had these systems been in place in 2004, they literally could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Perhaps that is one positive legacy of this disaster worth remembering today, 10 years later, as we look back on the recovery of those communities. Image credit: AFP/AP/Getty http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/dec/11/then-and-now-the-aftermath-of-the-2004-indonesian-tsunami-in-pictures Read more: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=106726 http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-strides-tsunami-warning-since-2004-155016481.html http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Our-Science/Natural-Hazards/Tsunami/2004-Boxing-Day-Tsunami http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30572079 http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=33442&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2005/02/

architectureofdoom

Atlanktikwall battery, Vigsø, Denmark

architectureofdoom

Atlanktikwall bunker, Vigsø, Denmark

destroyed-and-abandoned

House has half disappeared, alone on a hill with sheep for company. Near Bulls, New Zealand

Source: brian nz (flickr)

mdme-x

Jenny Holzer, [no title] from Inflammatory Essays 1979-82.

designing4disaster

Mitigation Milestones

Today in history:

Great Midwest Flood, April–October, 1993

The Mississippi River engulfs Kaskaskia Island, Illinois, August 2, 1993

United States Department of Defense; photo SSgt Paul Griffin

More than a 1,000 levees failed in the worst flooding along the Mississippi River since 1927. In response, officials supported increasing the use of non-traditional mitigation strategies such as relocation, expanding managed flood corridors, and stricter land use regulations.

To learn more about disaster mitigation, visit Designing for Disaster at the National Building Museum, on view through August 2, 2015.