f new and someday habitable land. Included in this new habitable land, one of our own states, Hawaii, has new land being created everyday. Because of this hot spot on our earth over a million people can call a volcano home. An active shield volcano exists there today burping out lava and constantly pouring it into the ocean. Watching this occur is like seeing the biggest recycling job on earth. The only thing constant about this world is the unpredictable change it goes through. The foundation of these volcanoes and earthquakes lies in the theory of plate tectonics. Living in Alaska, the home of hundreds of earthquakes a day and five volcanoes in a two hundred mile radius from Anchorage, there is no better example of this theory. Two of the twelve major plates Earth consists of come together to create major cracks in the earth. Our surface is deceiving in that it seems solid, yet like an eggshell that has been cracked it is very fragile. In March of 1964 residents living in Anchorage and in cities as far away as California and Hawaii became all too familiar with the unstable ground and the earthquakes and tsunami’s it is able to produce. But earthquakes aren’t the only things the ground under our feet can cause. Strato volcanoes, such as Mount Spurr, Redoubt, and Augustine, have been known to send ash and rocks flying from its summit too close to home. Now knowing about Anchorage’s land make-up I will think twice about where I might purchase a future home, and the soil liquification land of Turnigan Arm won’t be one of them. Every time we experience one of these forces it leaves us asking, “Is the worst over?”There is nowhere we can run to in order to escape the wrath of natures furry, for every place on earth is susceptible to its own kind disaster. Far too many of us learn too late how these disasters effect us on an individual level. The importance of geography needs to be reinforced and just as im...
