Hey guys, welcome to my last blog about Japan. This week I will be sharing with you Japans Greatest Natural hazard volcanic eruptions

Volcanic eruptions are a large threat to Japan because they made the islands and there is some with activity at all times. In addition to them being the very thing the islands are made of, according to volcanodiscovery.com Japan has a tenth of the worlds volcanos. The reason for this is that the country is on four plat boundaries in an area known as the ring of fire.

                Since every one of the islands have multiple active volcanos there needs to be a rapid evacuation plan for all who live near the more active and violent volcanos, as well as training for the country as a whole in the event an unpredicted eruption such as Mount Saint Helens in the U.S. should occur. I would put in place an extensive monitoring system in place for Mount Fuji because of its signs of activity during some earth quakes and its close proximity to Tokyo, Japans largest city.  Tokyo needs an evacuation plan and constant preparation to prevent a Pompeii like disaster should Fuji ever awaken. Some of these preparation should include ash sheltered that can be accesses from anywhere in the city and an extensive instant warning system that could include flash notification to mobile devices, informing them of evocation routs, the nearest ash shelter or simply a warning of potential activity. There should be a reverse 911 like system in place to call all lines with sudden evacuation notices, sirens to sound in public areas and of course the standard news and radio warnings.
                For housing developments in Japan central Japan is the best place to build because areas like Osaka, Hyogo, Okayama, Shiga have no volcanic activity or dormant volcanos in the area. There is little threat for an sorts of volcanic activity to threated homes, lives or business. Osaka is also a very active and large port city that offers commerce in addition to being a lava free zone. 

Hey all.

Japans topic of the week is coastal hazards. Since Japan is a series of  island it is constantly being eroded by waves form all sides. In addition to this the country is hit annually by typhoons and has faced several tsunamis. All of causes the beach and land to shift, causing various degrees of erosion. Japan has used engineering to help fight off this. They are filling the beaches with a item called a tetra-pod, which is basically a cement tripod that breaks apart the waves stopping there force from eroding the beach. The Japan Times covers it in the fallowing link. CLICK ME!

HEY GUYS!

Sorry I missed a week but here we are week ten and I get to talk to you about sever weather. So as you know my country is the lovely japan and what you may know is that Japan is prone to typhoons. These are basically a hurricane in the norther pacific ocean.  The technical name is a cyclone, and they mostly happen between July and September, however the season starts in May. The wind speed in these storms can be as high as 180 mph and spread out over 500 miles. My country has a list of stations one can use to fallow the storm on both the television and radio. In addition to that they have a site with every link and the storm basics can be found here.

http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/acs/tacs-typhoon.html

Hey all.

This week I wanted to share with you some information on Japan's volcanoes. My country has 118 of them if we count the ones in the ocean surrounding the country. Most of these are doormat but a good handful are considered restless and nine that are either erupting or have a current volcanic warning. A map of these can be seen here Here . One of the many warning systems that are present are Japan Meteorological Agency. This site shares warning and reports for all kinds of resources to help the people know what to do before and after the emergency. This link here shows the current volcanic activity and the risk level. 

Week Four.

Welcome back guys!

This is week four of my geology class and the topic for this week is Tsunamis! What a perfect topic for Japan. You see way back in 2011 Japan had a earthquake that caused a deadly tsunami to form. This was the countries worst one in centuries and caused massive fatalities. According to MIT Technology  Review there were warning systems in place that sent out a warning after the first quake and helped people and business be ready for the following quakes. In addition to this there are sensors flouting out in the Pacific that are able to read and notify emergency response centers of potential tsunamis. If you click Here you can see how this system works.

Hey all it is Grace!

   Welcome to my blog post week three.
This week we studies semismicity, which is how frequently an earthquakes happen in a region.
Once again my country I am writing about is japan which has a high semisicity because of its location under the meeting point of four plates. Today September 9th 2015 there has been three earthquakes over 4.0 in Japan. In the last twenty years there have been twenty five  significant earthquakes over 6.0. Yet only two have had death tolls over one thousand the first is January 17, 1995 with a death told of 6,434 and the second was March 11, 2011, which cause a tsunami  and took the life of 15,891. 

With all this activity japan needed to make some changes to lesson the damage. According to Japanecho.net "Japan’s earthquake resistance standards for buildings have been adopted and revised several times over the years in the aftermath of a major earthquake. Particularly important were the revisions made in the New Building Standards Act enacted in 1981, introducing new earthquake resistance standards. In 1978.The new regulations made it a legal requirement for all new houses, apartment buildings, and high-rise buildings to be designed to sustain only slight cracks in the event of an intermediate-scale earthquake ... and to not collapse even in the event of a major earthquake...In December 1995, the Law for Promotion of Seismic Retrofit of Buildings was passed. ... regular inspections have been carried out and improvements made to the earthquake resistance features of buildings that did not meet the requirements of the 1981 standards.... These measures have been further enhanced by the Japan Building Disaster Prevention Association, which guarantees liabilities and provides information on earthquake preparedness, and through the introduction of a system of tax deductions for improvement work on buildings to make them more resistant to earthquakes."(Japan's).  In addtion to structural advances they have also created an earthquake alert system, that is in theory able to help warn them to take cover.

"Earthquakes." Earthquakes. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/>.

"Earthquakes in Japan." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquakes_in_Japan>.

"Japan's Disaster Prevention System." Japan's Disaster Prevention System. Nippon Communications Foundation, 06 Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.japanecho.net/311-data/1306/>.

"List of Earthquakes in Japan." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan>.

Hey all.

I wanted to share with you a little information about my country of choice and its location in relevance to various plates. My country is Japan and a cool fact is that the plates under these islands are like the four corners, In the sense that four plats meet at practically the center of the islands. These four plates are the Eurasian, Philippines, Pacific and North American. This can be view Here.
This put the islands at high risk for earth quakes and Tsunamis much like the ones in March 2011. The type of boundary that lays under Japan is a convergent boundary. According to page 32 of our text this when one plate sinks under the other. This action is what causes the earthquakes, as well as, forms mountains and islands themselves, often through volcanic activity.

Sourses: Natural hazards third edition, by Keller and Devecchino

Hey all this is a blog for my geology class at MPC.
My blog will be about the country of japan and how geology relates it the risk and disasters that occur there. The assignment for out first week is to tell you what a natural hazard, a disaster and a catastrophe are.

A Natural Hazard is anything that is a risk to the people in land in a region, that occurs in because of nature. Some examples that both my home state and the country of Japan are at risk for are earth quakes and tsunamis, because of our location on the edge of tectonic plates and the ocean that is next to us.

A Disaster is an contained emergency, such as a river flooding a small town. According to my text book "Natural Hazards" by Keller and Devecchio, it only needs to meet one of four requirements listed below:

• Death toll of ten or more
• Total population affected must be greater than one hundred
• There is a declared state of emergency
• International assistance is requested 

A catastrophic is something that takes years to restore the area back to how it was before the event took place. It covers a large area, is very expensive to recover from, such as the earth quake in 2011 that caused a tsunami in japan. To date restoration efforts are in affect. It required foreign aid and caused a massive loss of lives.