If you have seen or heard the news about Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, volcanoes, landslides, sinkholes, extreme temperatures, and drought, among others striking different parts of the world then you know how much destruction they cause to human lives, property, valuable assets and even to people’s livelihood. It's easy to forget about them when everything is working fine but when they happen, they cause a lot of suffering and pain to the lives of people being hit. They tend to leave a scar on the National Economy which takes years if not decades to recover. Geoscience can preventand provide sustainable solutions when they inevitably occur.
What is Geoscience?
Geoscience is the field of study of the physical and chemical nature of Earth’s crust.Fundamentally, it is the scientific study of rocks, landforms, and processes taking place on Earth. People usually assume that it is used to identify and mine out minerals trapped beneath the surface of Earth but Geoscience has much more diversified use than that, it is also used for resource management, building policies to protect our environment, urban planning, fighting back climate change without disrupting the economic growth of the country and solving problems related to health, safety and welfare of society.
The study of Geoscience is helping us understand patterns in which processes on Earth take place, we can now predict Environmental changes more efficiently and quickly. This empowers us to take prior actions to safeguard against human and economic loss.
Geoscientists help reinforce communities and provide techniques to identify, avoid,recover from, mitigate, prepare for and respond to Natural Disasters. In coordination with engineers, social scientists, policymakers, public safety professionals, urban planners, and disaster managers, geoscientists conduct natural hazards research, monitoring, and make step-by-step guidelines for training & education for public outreach programs to help create resilient communities.
Technological Integrations
With the coming of the digital age, Geoscientists analyses the links between natural hazards, Earth’s physical processes, and how natural disasters impact the lives of the public affected. They identify hazard-prone areas through geologic mapping of the terrains and LiDAR technology, and advise on evacuation planning, land-use practices,and building safety codes, leading to more feisty communities. These innovations are saving millions of lives of people residing in Earthquake-prone zones. Early detection of hazards provides time for the Government or NGOs to make arrangements for displacing the people from the red zone and run rescue operations if the need arises.
Geological Monitoring
For the minimizing the potential impacts of Natural Hazards, Geoscientists have made Natural Hazard Monitoring a priority and several Geoscience enthusiasts are also employing Geospatial tools such as satellites, LiDAR, seismometer networks, and tide and stream gauges which help collect data to assist in hazard assessment and response and create more accurate models, timely forecasts, and warnings. Monitoring networks need stable, long-term funding commitments to function properly and generate extensive results. Disaster management takes a community effort hence Geoscientists are tasked with converting complex Technical data and findings into actionable and accessible information, providing scientific advice for mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts that can be adopted by the public at large.
Natural Hazard Monitoring is based on the acquisition and the interpretation of a signal suggesting changes in behavior or properties of a disastrous phenomenon or the occurrence of incidents. This ranges from acquiring basic meteorological data to complex ground movement measurements. Seismographs and Gutenberg-Richter diagrams are used to detect the ground shaking for earthquake detection, weather satellites are carefully calibrated to track the storm movements to predict hurricane landfall and monitor conditions that would promote wildfires. Volcanic eruptions are highly unpredictable hence, a constant watch on them helps in estimating when they are likely to erupt. Geoscientists track various factors and use modern techniques such as using seismometers to measure the probability of an earthquake occurring near an eruption, tiltmeters & GPS satellites to monitor any swelling near the eruption, robots called Spiders to monitor the gases escaping from the volcano, measuring temperature around the main vent and sometimes checking the history of eruptions can also provide clues to scientists for identifying patterns of activity before coming to any conclusion.
Forecasting Challenges
The process of forecasting any disaster is quite complex for example to forecast the location, magnitude, and timing of an earthquake a lot of unknown variables are involved, and different techniques are employed to do the same, some are observations of warning foreshocks, changes in magnetic fields, seismic tremor, changing groundwater levels, observed periodicity and stress transfer considerations but none of the techniques are reliable as the biggest problem with prediction is that they have to be accurate for most of the times and everywhere not limited to particular regions. A lot of the time necessary data is not available to predict a disaster or required actions are not implemented successfully due to the lack of awareness among the general public.
Geoscience as Ecological indicator
The number of Natural Hazards striking a region demonstrates the ecological health of that area and analyzing it through the Geoscientific lens brings striking findings and conclusions to the eyes of the people. Geoscience is helping the world to run seamlessly without itself coming into the spotlight, we must strive to create a conducive environment that understands and trusts the role of the geosciences in fostering creative solutions for the Earth and humanity. Moreover, Geoscientific research should be promoted and funded generously by the government as it is what helps us and prepares us for times of hardship. More Research and emphasis should be on How we can integrate modern computer science applications with the raw Geoscientific knowledge.
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