Understanding the vulnerability of the population of Afghanistan under multiple natural and anthropogenic risks with an indicator-based analysis

The purpose of this study is to understand the vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic hazards of the population of Afghanistan and the social factors which enhance or moderate such vulnerability. While vulnerability studies are commonly conducted in the United States, as well as many other global north countries, most studies of this type utilize data collected by central government entities in the form of a census which is periodically executed and uses standardized collection methods. In the case of Afghanistan, and many other countries in the global south, such data is hard to acquire, lacks a high level of confidence, or does not exist. For these reasons, this study will focus on efficiently utilizing data which has been collected by the Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan, as well as data compiled and made available by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Geographic Information Systems and Technology (GIS&T) Group to identify the most significant indicators of vulnerability within the population of Afghanistan. The result of this study is a by district analysis of the country of Afghanistan, in which vulnerability to hazards is inferred for the population of each district and ranked based on the relative vulnerability of the population. This information can assist the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, as well as other aid organizations, to prepare to respond to humanitarian crises more effectively

The Cambrian Period

The Cambrian Period extends from 570 million years ago to 505 million years ago. Notwithstanding the discovery of the Ediacara fauna, the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era has historically been taken as the beginning of historical time based on the first appearance of abundant fossil remains. It is interesting to note, however, that where first described, the lower Cambrian was not very fossiliferous

Earthquakes

For centuries, earth scientists have known where the major earthquakes occurred. They also knew they occurred in the same locales as the most violent volcanoes, a fact that led to centuries of arguments as to which was the cause of the other. Now we know that they are not cause and effect; they are both associated with the convergent plate margins. During the mid-1900s, another major zone of both volcanic and earthquake activity was discovered, namely the divergent margins, the most important site being the oceanic ridges. Since then, we have also come to understand the occurrence of volcanic activity within the plates as being located over hot spots beneath the plates. All of this new knowledge has been the result of the theory of plate tectonic. In our discussions of volcanism, we learned that the observed difference in volcanic activity between convergent and divergent plates is due to the type of magma involved. We must now explain why the earthquakes associated with convergent plate margins are of much higher magnitude than those associated with divergent plate margins. For this we must review our discussion of stress and strain

The Mississippian Period

The first rocks to attract the attention of the early European were those containing the coals, primarily because of their importance in supplying the source of energy for the Industrial Revolution which began in the mid-1700s. As early as 1808, the coal-bearing rocks were referred to on the Continent as the bituminous terraine\u27 while the British geologists called them the Coal Measures The name Carboniferous was introduced in 1822 by Conybeare and Philips when they were attempting to make sense of the rocks of England and Wales. They proposed that all of the rocks from the Coal Measures down to the Old Red Sandstone be included in what they termed the Carboniferous Order; at that time, geologists had not yet begun to assign rocks to systems . In 1839, the Old Red Sandstone was transferred to the Devonian and the remainder of the Carboniferous Order was designated as the Carboniferous System. In time, the system was subdivided into the Upper Carboniferous that contained most of the coal beds and the Lower Carboniferous which, being dominated by carbonates, was essentially barren of coal,. North American geologists observed the same difference in the lithology of the system, so much so that they actually separated the Upper and Lower Carboniferous and elevated each to the rank of a system. In 1891, the U.S. Geological Survey recognized the separation and named the Upper Carboniferous the Pennsylvanian System after excellent exposures of the coal in western Pennsylvania and the Lower Carboniferous the Mississippian System after exposures of the limestones along the Mississippi Valley. Although North American geologists universally recognize the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian as two separate s stems of rock accumulated during two periods of time, European geologists still consider the Lower and Upper Carboniferous as two series of the same system

The Silurian Period

The Silurian Period is the shortest of all the periods of the Paleozoic Era, lasting only 30 million years from 438 million years ago until 408 million years ago. As the Silurian Period opens, the eastern margin ofLaurentia was dominated by the Taconic Highlands that had been created during the Taconic Orogeny at the close of the Ordovician. The rest of the craton was essentially flat-lying and covered by a shallow sea. Except for the northeastern margin which was involved in a major orogeny following the Taconic Orogeny, Laurentia was tectonically quiet throughout the Silurian. About 10 million years before the collision of A valonia in the Devonian , Baltica collided with the northeastern portion of Laurentia during the Caledonian Orogeny and creating the Caledonian Mountains. The Caledonian Orogeny involved eastern Greenland, the northeastern margin of Laurentia down to about the latitude of Nova Scotia, western British Isles from Ireland and Scotland to the eastern margin of Scandinavia (Figure 1 ). The Appalachian region was not affected by the Caledonian Orogeny

Oceans and Shorelines

Until 1872 when H.M.S, Challenger, a British warship converted for research, made its historic voyage, relatively little was known about the oceans. The voyage, funded by the British government, was mandated to chart the depth of the ocean, measure the various ocean currents, amass data on the composition of the ocean\u27s water and bottom sediments, and collect information on ocean life. At the time of the voyage, except for a few soundings, almost nothing was known about the ocean bottom. Most scientists of the day had considered the vast expanses of the deep ocean basins to be nothing more than flat, featureless surfaces that, except for a few isolated volcanic islands, extending from one continent to another. The discovery of a submarine mountain range by H.M.S. Challenger was the first indication that the topography of the ocean bottom was not so simple. It is interesting to note that what H.M.S. Challenger had discovered was a portion of the Atlantic mid-oceanic ridge. It would be nearly a century before the oceanic ridges were rediscovered using sonar, an invention of the U.S. Navy, that allowed scientists their first real view of the topography of the ocean basins. Although the data amassed by H.M.S. Challenger significantly expanded our understanding of the ocean, knowledge of the ocean was to remain very limited until the mid 1900s

The Cenozoic Era

It has been said that the modem world unfolded during the Cenozoic Era. It is true that every feature of the modem landscape was formed during the Cenozoic Era. The Alps and the Himalaya have literally risen from the ocean floor. The Rocky mountains have been formed, worn away and re-uplifted to their present heights. The Appalachian Mountains that had formed at the close of the Paleozoic and worn away by the end of the Triassic, were uplifted and sculpted into their present form during the Cenozoic. All the other mountains of the world were also elevated and sculpted to their present form during the past 65 million years. In addition to being a time of landscape sculpting, the Cenozoic Era was also a period of crustal unrest. Some of the mountain building events of the Cenozoic are still underway as is evident from the presence of volcanic activity and earthquakes in many parts of the world. The Cenozoic was also a time when the modem animal and plant world evolved. Life on Earth changed during the Cenozoic in many ways. Many of the animals that had dominated the seas from the marine reptiles to the ammonites had disappeared with their ecological niches being taken over by the modem inhabitants of the sea including bottom-dwelling molluscs, whales, and the teleost fish. On land, the flowering plants became the dominate plants while the mammals took over the spaces once occupied by the dinosaurs

The Triassic Period and the Beginning of the Mesozoic Era

The Triassic Period is the first period of the Mesozoic Era, a span of time from 245 million years ago to 66 million years ago. Although the Mesozoic era commonly known as the Age of the Dinosaurs,\u27, it should be pointed out that there were other important evolutionary developments taking place such as the appearance of the first mammal birds and flowering plans. The onset of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic Period, was also a time of profound tectonic activity affecting the entire North American craton. In the east, the primary event was the breakup of Pangea and the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. In the west, it was the formation ofan Andean-type continental margin as the newly-formed continent of North America rapidly moved westward in response to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean coupled with the addition of exotic terranes to the western margin of the continent.. As the Atlantic oceanic ridge rose, the volume of ocean waters that was displaced was sufficient to result in the most extensive flooding of the continent by an epeiric sea since the Paleozoic; a sea whose presence was recorded by the accumulation of extensive carbonates throughout the continental interior. In the oceans, new life forms evolved to fill the vacancies brought about by the Permian extinction. When life returned, however, most of the old forms were gone and an assemblage comparable to those living in our modem oceans took their place. Without doubt, the Mesozoic era was the time of the reptiles with reptilian forms dominating nearly every eco-system from the ocean to the land to the air. But it was also the time of significant changes in the plant community with the flowering plants evolving before the end of the Cretaceous along with a tremendous increase in the kinds and numbers of pollinating insects. The Mesozoic Era ends with the a mass extinction, second only to the Permian extinction

Coal Genesis

Most textbooks classify coal as a sedimentary rock even though it does not fit the definition of a sedimentary rock. While a sedimentary rock is a rock formed from the products of weathering and erosion , coal forms from the remains of land plants. In fact, coal doesn\u27t even fit the definition of a rock. A rock is defined as mixture of minerals and minerals are defined as natural occurring, solid, inorganic substances ..• Coal is composed largely (90+%) of organic substances (macerals) which, by definition, are not minerals. If coal must be classified as a rock, because it forms from a previously existing rock by the application of heat, pressure, and chemically active fluids , it would best fit the definition of a metamorphic rock. All of this points up the shortcomings of classification systems. Rather than forcing coal to fit a classification scheme in which it does not belong, a better definition is that coal is a natural-occurring, carbon-rich, combustible solid found in association with terrestrial sedimentary rocks