What are environmental hazards?
- As we know the environment provides us lots of services that are beneficial to whole biotic communities but the environment behaves badly sometimes to biotic community especially human, the activities of the environment that are potential to harm man or property or both is called environmental hazards.
- Environmental hazards are elements of circumstances in the environment that have the potential to cause harm to people or property or both. Environmental hazards can be natural or man-made hazards.
- In one line we can say, environmental hazards are the possibilities of risk caused by the environment.
Natural Environmental Hazards:
Natural hazards are caused by natural forces.
For example,
- Volcanic Eruptions
- Earthquake
- Landslide
- Cyclones
- Lightening and Hailstorms
- Forest fires
- Cloud burst
- Floods and drought
- Cold waves and heat waves
- Epidemics
Human-Induced environmental hazards:
Some environmental hazards happened due to human activities.
For example,
- Human-induced landslides, earthquakes, mining.
- Release of poisonous gases from chemical factors
- Nuclear waste and explosion
- Eutrophication
- Epidemics
Remedial measures of Environmental Hazards:
There should be two methods of remedies;
- To prevent the human activities that cause human-induced environmental hazards.
- Capacity building against the natural hazards
The following human activities need to be adopted to reduce the environmental hazards:
- A sustainable method of development such as the use of the clean source of energy, afforestation, and organic farming.
- Scientific slope analysis before construction of infrastructure in hilly areas to prevent landslides, earthquakes, and soil erosion.
- Do not build a big dam.
- Do not release toxic materials o the environment.
- Strict implementation of security norms.
The following are ways to minimize the natural environmental hazards:
- Hazard mapping.
- Building cyclone shelters.
- Houses should be made up of lighter materials and should be avoided in high seismic-prone areas.
- Strengthening the flood forecasting mechanism, giving proper flooding space to rivers, and making embankments.
- Watershed management is a way to deal with drought hazards.
Try to solve the following questions:
- Landslide is a major problem in the Himalayan region. Discuss its causes and mitigation measures. ( 20 marks)( UPSC 2021 geography optional)
- Identify the Landslide-prone regions of India and suggest some measures to mitigate the disasters caused by these. (NCERT)
- Differentiate the causes of landslides in the Himalayan region and the Western Ghats.
- “The Himalayas are highly prone to landslides.” Discuss the causes and suggest suitable measures of mitigation.
- "Geomorphological changes are largely responsible for environmental hazards in the Himalayan region." Comment with relevant examples. (UPSC 2018, 200 words, 15 marks)
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1 Comments:
Click here for CommentsDid you make these notes after studying SS Ojha sir classes?? 😅
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