Coastal Flooding case study
- Created by: charlia
- Created on: 29-04-15 13:29
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- Coastal Flooding - Tsunami Southern Asia 2004.
- Facts
- An earthquake that was a 9.0 on the Richter Scale, the epicentre was off the western coast of Somatra in Indonesia
- The waves reached more than 2km inland at Trincomalee in the north east of sri lanka.
- Waves up to 30m high hit Sumatra within minutes of the earthquake.
- Impacts
- Social
- deadliest tsunami recorded, an estimated 230000 killed or missing.
- 1.7 million made homeless
- sources of fresh drinking water polluted.
- 400,000 lost their jobs in Sri Lanka alone
- Economic
- Estimated cost of the initial damage is estimated at between $8 and $15 billion
- Fishing equipment and boats destroyed, fishing is a large part of the economy.
- Salinisation reduced soil fertility, crop production will be reduced for several years.
- 25% of hotels in southern Thailand were closed for at least 6 months, tourism is important to the economy of many countries affected.
- Number of foreign visitors to Phuket dropped by 80% in 2005.
- Environmental
- 8 million litres of oil were released into the environment after two oil plants in Indonesia were destroyed.
- The high salt content of the floodwater destroyed the natural balance of many ecosystems e.g. the Karagan Lagoon in southern Sri Lanka.
- Mangrove forests damaged by the force of the waves or covered in layers of silt.
- Social
- Human activity which increased the Impacts.
- Mangrove forests protected parts of the Sri Lankan coast by absorbing wave energy. However, pressure for tourist development led to destruction of mangrove forests in other areas - estimated that Thailand has lost up to half since 1975.
- Thought that healthy coral reefs surrounding the Maldives acted as a breakwater and prevented destruction of low lying islands. Illegal coral mining and the use of dynamite in blast fishing has destroyed many coral reefs in the indian ocean.
- Facts
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