Floods cause tremendous property damage and kill large numbers of people each year. Why does this happen every year, and is there anything that can be done about it?

What will be an ideal response?


Significant numbers of people live in floodplains. We do so because it is easy to build there, and because it is usually easy to grow crops there. These benefits, though, come with a cost-the danger of being flooded. Some people cannot afford to live anywhere else, in places such as Bangladesh, for example. Others live there because they see an economic advantage to living and/or working there. Whatever the reason, floodplains are inherently dangerous places. For poor countries and for poor people, there is little likelihood that anything other than the most stringent controls would work. For the more affluent, though, controls could be implemented to restrict people from the most dangerous floodplains.

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

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Which of the following strategies for dealing with e-wastes fits best with at least one of the three principles of sustainability?

A. Help children learn to earn money by scavenging for scrap metal. B. Ship e-wastes to developing countries. C. Burn e-wastes periodically. D. Dispose of e-wastes in landfills. E. Give used electronics back to manufacturer for remanufacturing, repair, or recycling.

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

Coarse-grained regolith where 20 to 80 percent of the fragments are greater than 2 millimeters in size is called

A) soil. B) rock. C) earth. D) debris.

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

This biome is generally located north of the 10°C (50°F) isotherm for the warmest month, such as the extreme northern areas of North America and Russia

A) temperate rain forest B) arctic and alpine tundra C) boreal and montane forest D) midlatitude broadleaf and mixed forest

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

Which of the following is used to characterize a material as either a neurotransmitter or a hormone?

A) its chemical composition B) its physiological behavior C) both a and b D) either a or b

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences