For your Final Essay, you will research and write a hazard assessment of your family’s home area’s top two natural hazards. Your home community is the region where you grew up or where your family resides. If you live on campus, it is the region or community you identify as home(South Monterey COunty) before you moved to —-. The essay requirements are:
- INTRODUCTION – Identify the two most threatening natural hazards to your family’s region. Using the information we discussed this semester, evaluate which two hazards are your family’s region’s highest priorities/risks. Justify why these two natural hazards are the highest risk or most important (your evaluation.) Provide evidence from reputable sources that substantiate your selection of these two hazards. Justify your data with in-text citations and links – REQUIRED. Discuss only the two highest-risk hazards. Hazards must be of the types covered in the text, excluding climate change.
- HAZARD 1 – Discuss the natural causes of this natural hazard (the science) and how human behaviors exacerbate the risk to the population. Describe the linkages between Hazard 1 and other natural hazards to demonstrate your understanding of Environmental Unity. Please do not repost a previous forum – it will not receive credit. The Final Essay must be a new synthesis and summary.
- IMAGE – Embed an image of a past event that illustrates the damaging impacts of this hazard in your community. Please include a caption that clearly describes what the reader should notice in the image and why it is important, including the event description, location, and date. Evaluate if the event was a hazard, disaster, or catastrophe using the definitions in the text. The image should be visible to the reader without a click and large enough (minimum 600 x 600 pixels) to see the essential details. The image caption should list the image source with a hyperlink. NOTE: Do not recycle images from your previous forum posts. Look for a new photo to share. Recycled images will not receive credit.
- RECOMMENDATIONS – Research and report on how human decisions exacerbate the hazard risk and recommend how individuals can reduce their risk from this hazard. Recommendations should be reasonable, specific, and appropriate for your community’s economic and social conditions. Include in-text citations with sources and hyperlinks of these risk reduction recommendations.
- HAZARD 2 – same information as Hazard 1 outlined in items 2-4.
- RISK ASSESSMENT – Identify the highest risk and safest locations, considering the top two hazards. Where would you target help first if the hazard event occurred? Specify the area in your county or region at significant risk from these two hazards. Explain why this area has the highest risk from the two hazards. Where would you construct your house with hazard risk reduction being the only priority? Specify the safest location in the region to build a home to avoid these two natural hazards. Explain why you chose this location. Hazard risk reduction is the only criterion when selecting the home location.
- REGIONAL MAP – Include a county or regional map with the highest risk location(s) circled on the map and labeled with“help here first.” Identify the safest place in the region with a star and label it with “build my home here” on the map. The map must have these labels to receive credit. Include an informative caption with a hyperlink to the image source.
- SOURCES – Include all your sources in CSE format with active hyperlinks in a “Works Cited” section at the bottom of the report. All data in the essay also needs in-text citations formatted like this (Keller & DeVecchio, 2019) with hyperlinks.
- Your post needs six paragraphs: Introduction, Hazard 1, Hazard 2, Recommendations, Riskiest and Safest locations with labeled map, and Works Cited. Within the appropriate paragraph, include the two hazard images and one annotated regional map with captions. Your report will be roughly 3 – 4 pages with a minimum of 1000 words and no more than 1500 words, not including the “Works Cited.”
- Remember, this essay is not an opinion paper. Research the topic, report what you find, and justify your assessment with proper in-text citations.
– The natural hazard would be based on South Monterey County