Restless Earth/Document

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About the event

The Workshop has been designed as an interactive exercise that encourages students to study the aftermath of a major earthquake and how disaster response organisations react. There is a need for a detailed map of the affected area to be used by a variety of organisations, each of which will require different information to be shown. Students are assigned to different roles and will need to work collaboratively in order to arrive at a consensus in their final product. Currently, the Workshop looks at the earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan that occurred in March 2011, with the exercise based in and around the city of Sendai. Students are provided with a range of source maps, many of which only have text in Japanese, which they can use to extract the necessary information. They are also provided with a laptop to access Internet resources to supplement the information on the mapping. Finally they are given two outline maps on which to add their information – they can use one or both, it is their job as a team to decide this. The Workshop runs for 2 hours, at the end of which we ask each group to explain to a BCS co-ordinator what they have done, the sources they have used and what were the major factors that influenced their final product. The BCS co-ordinator will offer a constructive critique of the product and if time permits we will collectively identify a ‘winner’ from the finished products.

Further details about the Restless Earth Workshop for Year 10 students The British Cartographic Society (BCS) is extending its Outreach Programme to schools by running FREE to attend workshops for Year 10 secondary school students on mapping natural disasters.

The theme of the workshop is ‘Restless Earth’ with specific reference to post disaster mapping and focuses on the earthquake disaster in Japan. It will involve a series of practical activities that will integrate good map design with GIS technology.

The workshop supports both Edexcel and AQA Physical Geography modules entitled The Restless Earth, specifically the following key ideas

  • Earthquakes occur at constructive, destructive and conservative plate margins

- Features of earthquakes – epicentre, focus, shock waves.

  • The effects of earthquakes and responses to them

- Primary and secondary effects; immediate and long term responses

  • Tsunamis are a specific secondary effect and can have devastating effects in coastal areas

- A case study of a tsunami – its cause, effects and responses.

Teacher's Notes

A PowerPoint demonstration to use before the event is available and it is very useful if teachers could run through this with the students who will be attending just before the workshop. Speaker notes are included, although the main aim is to refamiliarise the students with the Sendai earthquake and reinforce the magnitude of damage and disruption.

Some facts and figures about the Tohoku-Oki earthquake and tsunami that are important to share

  • The horizontal slippage underwater was 50m over an area of 100s of sq kms.
  • There was a vertical rebound of up to 24m offshore.
  • The tsunami was moving at 800 Kms/Hr, about the sae speed as a Jumbo Jet at cruising altitude.
  • When it hit Sendai the tsunami was the height of a 3 storey building.
  • 6 million people were directly exposed to the effects, with 20,000 deaths. The vast majority of these were directly form the tsunami – with evidence suggesting that if you could get to the fourth storey of a building you would be okay, anything below that and you were in danger. Contrast this with the Haiti earthquake where 1 million people were exposed and 230,000 died; draws the distinction between effects in rich and poor areas, where education and infrastructure can make a huge difference. Japan has a policy of ‘vertical evacuation’, i.e. get to high ground or high building
  • The following day there was an aftershock measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, just 50 miles from Tokyo. Ordinarily this magnitude would be world news, with Tokyo a city of 20 million people exposed, but there was very little damage and only 3 deaths! This is testament to the precautions and construction.
  • The magnitude of the earthquake was 9.1, making it the 5th largest in recorded history. The size took experts by surprise and is by far the largest recorded in the region.
  • The problem at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant was not caused directly by the reactors or the cooling system being deficient. The issue was the power supply. On receipt of a tsunami warning, all electricity is automatically cut off to reduce risk of fires. Major installations such as hospitals and power plants have a back up supply. Unfortunately the Fukushima Plant placed too much faith in their tsunami sea wall (designed for a 6m wave, hit by a 12m wave) and located the back up power facility at ground level. This was then swamped by the tsunami, which resulted in the cooling failing, resulting in reactor meltdown. Had the back up power been located 15m above ground there would have been no problem at Fukushima.
  • As a result of the earthquake and rebound, Honshu island is now 3m wider! (Taken from precise GPS measurements).

It would be very useful if teachers could show the video clip at the following site which shows the initial tremor from the earthquake and then the tsunami inundating the city of Sendai (the first 2 minutes are the most useful):www.flixxy.com/japanese-tsunami-viewed-from-a-car.htm. In addition the following websites provide useful additional information or illustrations of the damage and devastation

For your information here is some feedback form other schools who have participated in this workshop:

Overall I thought the day was very useful indeed and that maps are more than just a pretty drawing, they have meaning and useful qualities" Student from Parkside School.You can read a review and summary of the Restless Earth Workshop attended by Parkside School on their website

"The Sendai Earthquake fits in very well with the curriculum for AQA A - it is an earthquake case study that hits two areas - earthquakes in richer parts of the world and the effects of a tsunami. The task itself simulates the actual processes that take place in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and as such are made very real to the students. By undertaking the task students have embedded this case study and have been able to recall details in case study answers in test questions since." Lampton School.

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