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The oil slick as seen from space by NASA's Terra satellite on 24 May 2010. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been described as the worst environmental disaster in the United States, releasing about 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m 3) of crude oil making it the largest marine oil spill in history.
The term "disaster" itself is defined as follows: "Disasters are serious disruptions to the functioning of a community that exceed its capacity to cope using its own resources. Disasters can be caused by natural, man-made and technological hazards , as well as various factors that influence the exposure and vulnerability of a community."
Environmental disasters show how the impact of humans' alteration of the land has led to widespread and/or long-lasting consequences. [3] These disasters have included deaths of wildlife, humans and plants, or severe disruption of human life or health, possibly requiring migration. [4] Some environmental disasters are the trigger source of more ...
Earthquake environmental effects are divided into two main types: Coseismic surface faulting induced by the 1915 Fucino, Central Italy, earthquake. Primary effects: which are the surface expression of the seismogenic source (e.g., surface faulting), normally observed for crustal earthquakes above a given magnitude threshold (typically M w =5.5 ...
The main long-term effect is through global climate change, which reduces the temperature globally by about 5–15 °C for a decade, together with the direct effects of the deposits of ash on their crops. A large supervolcano like Toba would deposit one or two meters thickness of ash over an area of several million square kilometers.
[40] [86] Further research is needed to assess the long-term health effects of elevated ionizing radiation from Chernobyl on flora and fauna. [ 64 ] [ 75 ] Several research groups have suggested that plants in the area have adapted to cope with the high radiation levels, for example by increasing the activity of DNA cellular repair machinery ...
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The Business Dictionary provide a more comprehensive definition for "disaster response"; [2] Aggregate of decisions and measures to (1) contain or mitigate the effects of a disastrous event to prevent any further loss of life and/or property, (2) restore order in its immediate aftermath, and (3) re-establish normality through reconstruction and ...