Natural Disaster Blog

 William Vasseur

Week 1

The country I chose in Finland.  I chose this country because I have always been fascinated by Scandinavian countries.  Finland is located in Northern Europe not too far from the Arctic Circle.  Finland borders Sweden, Norway, and Russia.  The capital of Finland is Helsinki which is located at the bottom of Finland close to the Baltic Sea.  

    The differences between Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes are simple.  Hazards refer to dangerous and risky circumstances that can have enough potential to cause a threat to people.  Disasters are when a hazard fully occurs, and attacks the property and attacks human life.  A catastrophe is a specific kind of disaster, one that is extremely large and is outside the ability for humans to cope.  

Week 2: Tectonic Plates

Finland is located in the middle of the Eurasian tectonic plate with the closest boundary being the Eurasian plate and North American plate boundary.  The Britannica map below shows the tectonic plates in the world and you can clearly see that Finland falls right in the middle of the Eurasian Plate.  Being in the middle of the Eurasian plate has little affect on Finlands weather.  However, with Finland having a coast they do experience some Tsunamis however they are rare.  

Closer to southern Finland there are numerous active volcanoes due to the collision of two divergent plates.  The two plates that cause this are the African Plate and the Eurasian plate colliding way south of Finland.  Finland has very cold winters with moderate summers.  The weather in Finland is more due to their geological location being so close to the Arctic Circle with a third of the country being in the Arctic Circle.