Hurricanes And Their Effects On The Environment (Essay Sample)

Hurricanes
Introduction
According to the Oxford Dictionary of contemporary English, hurricanes are huge storms characterized by strong spiral winds moving at a speed of up to 75 to 200 miles per hour. Hurricanes can last for over a week and in the process covering a distance of between 10 to 20 miles in an open ocean. Hurricanes occur when waters in the ocean have been heated over several months during the summer thereby reducing the density of the waters to an extent that such waters can easily be moved by whirlpools in the oceans. Besides the strong moving winds, hurricanes gather heat and energy whenever they come in contact with warm ocean water. They thus cause enormous damage to property and destruction of property. Hurricanes affect the environment by destroying vegetation cover, bring down business in the affected areas and hugely hamper communication in such areas.
Effects on the Environment
The effects of hurricanes on the environment are determined by the intensity of high winds. The high winds determine the overall strength of the hurricane as well as the surge and damage capability of the storm. The environment consists of people, wildlife and the vegetation cover. As a result therefore, hurricanes have both positive and negative impacts on the environment. For instance, in the event that a hurricane with strong high winds occurs, the surge might be so powerful that buildings, living homes, social amenities and roads are swept away. In some incidences, hurricanes the swerve waters might be in large quantities causing them to cause flooding in flat areas. The extreme effect of hurricanes is that they cause loss of human lives, due to drowning and submersion of living units. For example, in August 2015, Hurricane Katrina which struck the Gulf Coast of the United States of America killed a total of 1, 836 people, and 1577 from Louisiana and 238 from Mississippi. The number of deaths can even increase in the event that hurricanes trigger earthquakes. Even the marine ecosystem is never spared by hurricanes; the penetration of salty ocean water into freshwater lakes and seas results in massive deaths of fresh water habitants such aquatic plants and fish.
Another detrimental effect of hurricanes on the environment is that they are associated with extremely strong winds which completely defoliate forest canopies and hence structural changes in wooded ecosystems. Wildlife an birds which depend on such ecosystem end up losing their habitats or are even swept away by the moving water. In the event that the surge waters become logged in the flat areas, the total vegetation cover may die since not all plants are able to take in dissolved oxygen from water and thus fail to carry out their respiration functions normally. Moving water also carry soil debris along it which might end up blocking drainage channels or even paths. Hurricanes therefore cause soil erosion and can easily trigger landslides. Sediment erosion has also been identified to have adverse effects on oyster beds and coral reefs mostly found on the ocean beds.
Although hurricanes are destructive in nature, they do have positive impacts on the environment too. As mentioned earlier on, hurricanes move soil debris from one point to another. Similarly, the water moves silt from the ocean and deposits the same wherever the water settles. Even all the products of defoliation are never taken back to the ocean by the moving water but instead are deposited where the water finally settles. The silt deposits as well as the rotting vegetation end up increasing land fertility at their final destination.
Effect on communication
Hurricanes affect communication in two broad ways; they destroy the infrastructure and communication gadgets as well as hamper signal transmission in case of telecommunication. The strong high winds have sufficient thrust and power to destroy communication masts and other overhead communication structures. For example, structures such as communication lines, telephone booths, satellite masts and boosters can easily be broken by the strong high winds. In such case, any communication that relies on such structures cannot take place. In the modern error, most of the communication is done via underground cables and overhead receivers and transmitters. Although it might be easy to identify and point out collapsed satellite receivers and transmitters, identifying broken underground fiber cables is a camber sum task. Besides, the whole repair and maintenance of such structure increases the operational cost of communication structures.
The swerve waters reaching the mainland might carry soil debris from one place and deposit it on pathways and major road, especially in flat areas thereby rendering such paths impassable to both human beings and vehicles. Any communication via such roads will subsequently come to a standstill. In fact, one reason as to why the number of causalities has been on the increase in the recent hurricanes is because the waters dump soil debris on the roads and the atmosphere cannot allow aircrafts to ply such atmosphere. Any mergency and rescue operations are therefore greatly hampered, a situation that leads to numerous deaths and extensive damages.
Effect on business
Business, the exchange of goods and services, is more developed in regions where people are settled and comfortable. Therefore, anything that directly touches on the comfort of residents of any given area winds up affecting their engagement in business activities. To begin with, business operation requires capital investment which is not easy to secure. When hurricanes strike, all the funds available are diverted to either salvaging the causalities or reconstructing property that was destroyed by the waters. As ...