Natural Disasters (7th grade): Recommended Books

With the increase in natural disasters in recent years, the burgeoning world population is clearly expanding faster than our disaster reduction technology. This new edition provides a single source on historical earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from throughout the world.

An expert's report on why wildland fires keep getting hotter, bigger, and more dangerous to the men and women who fight them Are wilderness fires now a tragic and enduring feature of the American landscape?

These books offer a basic introduction to meteorology, climatology, aspects of other environmental sciences, and approaches to environmental management.

This book shows that floods and droughts don't happen by accident but are the products of patterns of wind, temperature, and precipitation that produce meteorologic extremes. It introduces the mechanics of global weather, puts these processes into the longer-term framework of climate, and then explores the evolution of climatic patterns through time to show that floods and droughts, once considered isolated "acts of God," are often related events driven by the same forces that shape the entire atmosphere.

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama. First came the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150-mile-per-hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces. Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest domestic refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, as debris and sewage coursed through the streets, and whole towns in south-eastern Louisiana ceased to exist. And third, the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself.

The world is burning, and it appears that we are to blame. Conditions that create large-scale fire disasters are occurring more frequently every year, spurred on by global warming. And the potential for damage, loss of life, and greater harm to the environment is staggering.

Tornadoes are the most violent, magnificent, and utterly unpredictable storms on earth, reaching estimated wind speeds of 300 mph and leaving swaths of destruction in their wake. In Tornado Alley, Howard Bluestein draws on two decades of experience chasing and photographing tornadoes across the Plains to present a fascinating historical account of the study of tornadoes and the great thunderstorms that spawn them.

The most affordable, informative text available on the intricate anatomy of volcanoes, this concise paperback is the ideal text for classes in geology, atmospheric science and geography. Beautifully illustrated with both art and incredibly photos from the author's private collection.