About this item
Natural disasters bedevil our planet, and each appears to be a unique event. Leading geologist Susan W. Kieffer shows how all disasters are connected. In 2011, there were fourteen natural calamities that each destroyed over a billion dollars’ worth of property in the United States alone. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast and major earthquakes struck in Italy, the Philippines, Iran, and Afghanistan. In the first half of 2013, the awful drumbeat continued—a monster supertornado struck Moore, Oklahoma; a powerful earthquake shook Sichuan, China; a cyclone ravaged Queensland, Australia; massive floods inundated Jakarta, Indonesia; and the largest wildfire ever engulfed a large part of Colorado. Despite these events, we still behave as if natural disasters are outliers.
About the Author
Susan Kieffer is a planetary scientist who, over the decades of her career, discovered that the Earth is the most fascinating planet around. As a geologist, she's studied what happens when a meteorite (such as the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs) hits, what happened in the 1980 lateral blast at Mount St. Helens, and what makes the huge waves on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. She is an Professor emerita of geology and physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a MacArthur Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Her 2013 book "The Dynamics of Disaster" (W.W. Norton Press) describes, in a vocabulary appropriate to a public audience interested in science, the dynamics behind natural disasters. She has hosted the blog "GeologyInMotion.com" since 2010. The blog features commentary and background science of geologic processes that make the news.
