Three Causes of Increase in Worldwide Flooding
Floods, devastation, drought, fires, cyclones. Some claim that what planet Earth has been suffering for most of this year, and the past few years, is related to satellites spinning around the globe. Others believe these natural disasters are punishments for the sins of humanity. It could be one, it could be both, and it could be neither. But in the past 10 years, floods have intensified at a great degree. According to the article "Mississippi Flood", the worst of these floods, concerning power and abnormality, was the flood of the Mississippi River in 1993, also called, the Great Flood. Water reached unbelievably high levels and spread as far as 93,000 Kmē forcing about 40,000 of the citizens to evacuate the area. Tens lost their lives and the damage is estimated at about USD 10 billion (1). This particular flood and several other unusual lately occurring floods could be caused by either deforestation, La Niņa or under-ocean earthquakes.One of the major causes resulting in worldwide flooding is the over-logging of trees in a forest, also known as deforestation. Lately, the demand for wood has increased almost all over the world because industries are needing more and more wood to be able to catch up with the needs of the
"We are more worried about [the effects of] La Niņa than [those of] El Niņo" claims Victor Ramos, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary of the Philippines ("Fire and Rain" 2). Therefore, governments should consider methods to eliminate floods caused by deforestation, or at least suppress their effects by improving their forecasting systems and alerting the people of incoming floods ("Deforestation" 1). However, La Niņa, sister of 'the child', El Niņo, reverses the effects of El Niņo, thus causing unusually cold weather and devastating floods in certain areas around the globe. This kind of a flood is inevitable, that is, there is no way it could be stopped or suppressed for it is an act of nature rather than a human blunder, as deforestation. Glen Barry, a rainforest expert, commented, "Those forests are like a huge sponge. But, if we control our actions and respect our nature, we could at least have a better chance to ride out of a flood that could be there because someone careless chopped off a tree when nature wanted it to still be there. It works by changing ocean temperatures and wind patterns, which were first altered by El Niņo above an ocean's surface, thus resulting in pressure differences in the weather of that area. A single Tsunami wave formed where the earthquake took place could be half a meter in height, whereas that same wave while entering coastal waters could reach to as high as 15 meters and attain a speed of about 8oo km/h ("Tsunami" 1). Therefore, the solutions to prevent or at least restrain some types of floods from taking place are there, but the people who are supposed to act upon and carry out those solutions are not there. The resulting waves are called tsunamis. One characteristic of tsunamis that makes them disastrous is that they grow higher as they get closer to the shore, in other words, the farther away from the source they are, the higher and faster they become (5). When the deforested area is struck by severe rainfall, water does not get absorbed as it used to, thereby causing the huge amounts of unabsorbed rain waters to accumulate resulting in flood. If strong earthquakes that hit a town or a city are considered disastrous in strength and damage, then large earthquakes that occur in the bottom of an ocean are considered catastrophic, although their effects are not as direct as the first. Hence, there is no way one could prevent floods due to La Niņa from happening for there is no evidence to show that our hands are responsible for La Niņa's existence, it could just be an act of nature or an angry God, as cynics say. Floods, either those occurring because of under-ocean earthquakes or those due to La Niņa, are going to take place no matter what we do and we will never be able to control them completely.
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