The Philippines Hazard Hotspot Case Study Flashcards
What are the Philippines?
The Philippines is a group of 7000 islands in the SouthChina Sea in SouthEast Asia.
How big is its vulnerable population?
It has a vulnerable population of 98 million people who are at risk from a variety of hazards,
How many people live in Manila?
11 million people in the densely populated coastally situated megacity of the capital Manila.
What two kinds of hazards are there?
Geophysical Hazards and Hydrometeorological Hazards
Which geophysical hazards are there?
Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions, Tsunamis and Landslides.
Which hydrometeorological hazards
Typhoons, Floods, Droughts and Landslides.
What are volcanic eruptions?
hot or cold mixture of water and rock fragments that flows down the slopes of a volcano
Where is the Philippines near to?
The Philippines is near to a destructive plate boundary
What happens on this plate boundary?
The dense oceanic crust of the Philippine Plate is being subducted beneath the continental crust of the Eurasian Plate.
aka Phillippine plate schuift onder Eurasian plate
How were the islands formed?
by a combination of folding at the boundary, and volcanos formed from
magma that has risen to the surface from the Mantle below from the subducted Philippine plate.
Which volcano erupted?
Mount Pinatubo in June 1991
which killed 500 people
and caused crop failure due to the falling ash (from the eruption).
Earthquakes:
What can happen to the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate?
The Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate can become locked together as the Philippine Plate is
being subducted, which can cause the build-up and sudden release of pressure.
Where can earthquakes also occur?
At Fault Lines in the area, where the plate has cracked under pressure.
Which earthquake happened at a fault line?
1990 Earthquake on Luzon Island, magnitude 7.8, killing 1500 people.
Landslides:
What can trigger landslides?
- can be triggered by tectonic activity
in the area from Earthquakes - also be caused by heavy levels of rainfall
which lead to cliff saturation if they fall in areas with a steep gradient.
Example of a landslide
2006 Landslide on Leyte Island after 10 days of heavy rain, which buried a village and killed
hundreds of people.
Why is the Philippines vulnerable for typhoons?
- The Philippines is situated in the latitudes between 520 degrees North of the Equator,
- so is vulnerable to Typhoons developing in the West of the Pacific Ocean,
- where the ocean surface
temperature is above 26 degrees celsius,
see images binder for futher explanation!
What does the Coriolis effect do?
The Coriolis effect is strong enough to rotate the low
pressure system and trade winds will move storms Westwards towards the Philippines.
What is the coriolis effect?
The Coriolis effect is the apparent acceleration of a moving body on or near the Earth as a result of the Earth’s rotation. The Coriolis effect is an important determinant of wind direction on a global scale.
How many typhoons do the Philippines experience annually?
The Philippines experiences between 7- 0 typhoons annually.
Example of Philipinnes typhoon
Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013,
- which had maximum oneminute wind speeds recorded
at 315km/h before reaching land,
- the most powerful tropical cyclone to ever hit land,
- causing 6,500 human fatalities and affecting 11 million people.
What causes tsunamis?
Submarine Earthquakes in any of the surrounding plate boundaries or fault lines can cause a
tsunami local enough to be devastating to the Philippines.
Example of a tsunami that hit the Philipinnes
in 1976, a submarine earthquake of magnitude 7.9 caused a Tsunami 45m high which hit the
the coastline of the Moro Gulf on the Southern Island of Mindanao.
Al die namen en zo hoef je niet te kennen
Droughts:
When can droughts occur?
Drought can occur when the wet season hasn’t brought
enough rain to last through the dry season, or when the dry season is particularly harsh.
