My Favorite Links

USGS: Science for a Changing World - http://www.usgs.gov/

This website is useful becuase it provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and useable information.The diversity of the site's scientific expertise enables the viewer to carry out large-scale, multi-disciplinary investigations and provide impartial scientific information in their work.

- USGS Earthquake Map: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

This active mapping program provides daily data on earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or greater. This is a useful source because it provides realtime updates on earthquakes around the world, which aids in research capabilities to accurately monitor and measure genuine seismic activity in order to understand the areas that are prone to such natural hazards.

- USGS Landslide Monitoring: http://landslides.usgs.gov/monitoring/

This active monitoring service is essential to predicting the behavior of landslides and forecasting which storms can trigger large numbers of landslides. It specifically monitors selected landslides and hillsides, which allows the viewer to learn more about the physical processes that trigger landslides or control their movement. It is important to understand that the landslide monitoring data and information provided on the monitoring service are preliminary and have not been reviewed for accuracy; therefore the data are subject to revision.

- U.S. Volcanoes and Current Activity Alerts: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/

This active monitoring service presents detailed descriptions of volcano activity throughout the world. This is an essentail tool because it provides real rime data on alert levels and illustrates areas of concentrated risk for volcanic eruption. This tool can aid in research on volcanic natrual hazards and allows researchers to better understands areas of risk, which assists in mitigation efforts.

-  USGS Flood Inundation Mapper: http://wim.usgs.gov/fimi/

This active mapping tool provides flooding data within the United States. It uses several information systems to collect data including the National Weather Service Radar, State/Federal flood watch warnings, and AHPS Forecast Sites. The maping tool condenses this data into a visual display that marks areas with colored triangles based on their flood severity. This is a useful tool for understanding areas that are prone to flood risk and could be useful when reporting on floods within the United States in my blog.

- USGS Fire Danger Forecast: http://firedanger.cr.usgs.gov/viewer/viewer.htm

USGS Fire Danger Forecast provides a dynamic online map interface of the United States that can be used to view USGS datasets. The mapping service uses color coated layers to denote areas of increasing fire danger based on percent chance. By using this tool reasearchers can determine areas that are prone to wildfire hazards, which allows for mitigations efforts to be developed for different areas based on their risk potentials for the natural hazard. This will prove to be a usefull when adressing U.S wildfire hazards in my blog since it shows current wildfire information.

The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/us

This website provides extensive, global news coverage across a multitude of topics. This includes global environmental news that is uploaded daily to the website. The presence of extensive global environemtal news makes the website a great source for research for blog material.

- Natural Disasters and extreme weather: http://www.theguardian.com/world/natural-disasters

This tab of The Guardians website provides up to date reporting on global natural hazards. This is a germane source for material for my blog since it cover natural hazard events such as tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes. Most articles also include satelite imagery, on site photographs, and news report videos concerning the events they cover.

- Interactive Volcanoes: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2007/jan/25/volcanos

This interactive information tool provides information on what causes volcaninc activity. It includes how volcanoes are formed and why they erupt. It also gives information on the three main types of volcanoes: Scoria cone, shield volcano, and stratovolcano. This is an important resource because it helps researchers to better understand the causes for natural hazard attributed to valcanoes. It is also a nice source to have in order to elaborate on the details of volcanic activity in my blog posts related to that natural disaster.

- Interactive Earthquake: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2008/jan/23/earthquakes

This interactive information tool provides information on what causes seismic activity. It includes a description of why earthquakes happen and what their effects are on natural and man made systems. It also includes a description of how seismic activity is quantified using tools such as the Richter scale. Additionaly, it explains Rayleigh waves that undulate across the surface, shaking buildings vertically, and love waves that send a shearing motion sideways across the surface. Furthermore, it explains how earthquakes trigger tsunamis in some cases. This is a usefull tool for understanfing how the earthquakes work. This can be an important tool for my blog for giving detailed information on why the natural hazards that I cover came into existence.

Earth Observatoryhttp://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

The Earth Observatory provides the public with images, stories, and discoveries about climate and the environment that emerge from NASA research, including satelite mission, in-field research, and climate models. This information is useful in researching natural hazard events from multiple perspectives.

- Natural Hazards: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/

This interactive information tool uses a map of the globe to indicate natural hazard events that are occuring around the world. The natural hazards indicated on the interactive map include: fires, severe storms, dust, smoke, haze, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, crops, and droughts. By selecting one of the natural hazard topics, The map rearranges itslef to indicate areas of the world that are experiencing that natural hazard. By hovering over or selecting the events indicated in the map, the viewer can gain detailed information on that specific event.



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