earth in motion
A massive, mountain-like vent in the Earth's crust that spews out magma, ash, and gases.
What is a volcano?
This dangerous rotating column of air touches the ground during severe thunderstorms.
What is a tornado?
A major natural disaster that occurs when water overflows onto normally dry land.
An uncontrolled fire that spreads rapidly through vegetation, brush, or forests.
Often built underground or reinforced with steel, these heavy-duty protective structures are designed to save lives during a tornado or hurricane.
What are storm shelters?
The horseshoe-shaped, highly active seismic and volcanic zone located around the edges of the Pacific Plate.
What is the Ring of Fire?
This scientific term for the calm center of a hurricane is the __________.
What is the eye?
Triggered by sudden, overwhelming rainfall or the rapid melting of snow, this type of rapid-onset deluge can swallow entire landscapes in a matter of minutes.
What is a flash flood?
A mass of snow, ice, and rock falling rapidly down a mountain slope.
What is an avalanche?
Japan has constructed hundreds of miles of these massive concrete barricades along its coastline to block incoming ocean surges.
The point on the Earth's surface directly above where an earthquake originates.
What is the epicenter?
Rapid burn events are often caused by a combination of high winds, extreme heat, and this prolonged period of little to no rainfall.
What are droughts?
This specific type of underwater disaster acts like a giant cannonball, displacing ocean water when massive volumes of rock and sediment slide down steep marine slopes.
What are underwater landslides?
This underground, molten rock is the liquid catalyst that forms all volcanic eruptions before it breaches the surface.
What is magma?
This retrofitting technique adds diagonal steel beams to a building's frame to create rigid triangles that transfer seismic forces safely to the ground.
What is cross-bracing?
This process occurs at convergent boundaries when a denser oceanic plate sinks beneath a lighter continental plate.
What is subduction?
Dangerous snow conditions that reduce visibility to zero for drivers and travelers are known by this term.
What is a whiteout?
This term describes the number of complete wave cycles that occur in a specific amount of time.
What is frequency?
When massive wildfires vaporize trees and plants, they cause this catastrophic soil issue because there are no longer any roots to hold the dirt in place during heavy rains.
What is soil erosion?
Planting and protecting these dense coastal forests provides a highly effective, natural barrier that slows down incoming tsunami waves.
What are mangrove forests?
The driving force behind plate tectonics, caused by the rising and sinking of heated material in the mantle.
What are convection currents?
You can estimate how many miles away a lightning strike is by counting the seconds between the flash and the boom and dividing by this number.
What is 5?
An abnormal rise in coastal water generated by a storm, often causing severe flooding during hurricanes.
In 2010, the eruption of this unpronounceable Icelandic volcano completely paralyzed European airspace for days due to a massive ash cloud.
What is Eyjafjallajökull?
This flexible engineering design decouples a building's substructure from its superstructure using rubber bearings to absorb seismic shock.
What is base isolation?