There Can Be Both

Natural disaster, man-made disaster, what other disasters will there be? Yes all disasters- natural and manmade- are tragic, but there is positive results with the known negative ones. 

Natural Disasters-

To begin, natural disasters the way the earth puts everything back into its place. We try to control the earth and her nature but she will always manage to find ways to surprise us and to take her resources back. 

One of the natural disasters that us Nebraskan’s are more familiar with is the mighty tornado. The tornado is a violently rotating column of air that forms a funnel shape from severe thunderstorms. They make contact with the ground and once they do watch out! 

After striking the ground they can destroy anything in their path. They can throw debris up to 100 mph. Most have wind speeds of 110 mph the really severe ones have winds that reach 300 mph. Remember that at 75 mph singles are striped clean from roofs and siding starts to come off. The normal distance across is 250 ft but the really severe ones reach to about 2 miles across or more. 

We have all seen the TV reports about the carnage that a tornado leaves after it hits. It is tragic truly. You may think how in the world does anything good come from all the destruction? Good does come though. The violent winds have shifted dirt and the nutrients found in the dirt from one place to another. New nutrients will be something to want after the ground gets chopped up. The ground gets cleared naturally, yes it does require us humans to pick up the mess, but it’s faster then doing it by hand. Ecosystems do get badly banged up, but all of the critters that didn’t die during the storm will find themselves a new habitat. It maybe easier to find a new habitat in the wake of the storm because the storm had destroyed some many things and so then it makes more little hide outs to live in. Birds and small and animals especially take advantage of the small crevasses. The storm still does affect the ecosystem in many negative ways too. Such as habitat is lost, resources become scattered, and well the populations become scattered too. 

Man-made Disasters-

As we all know now is that human kind has had its own run with disasters. One that we all know about and hope that will not happen in the near future but probably will is the nuclear disaster. The word “nuclear” is nerve-racking because there is so much uncertainty that comes along with the whole subject. The whole point of nuclear energy is to generate energy at high rates for the world’s use. As a planet we use tons of energy everyday. Keeping up with the demand is the key, so the world keeps coming up with other alternatives to the solve the world’s energy crisis. Some of the alternatives we come up with though do more damage then they help. 

If a nuclear disaster were to happen many things will become destroyed. One thing is ecosystems. Water will become polluted with nuclear waste because the turbines need something to keep them cool. The air will become polluted do to the fallout. Land around the reactors will die do to the waste, and will probably not grow back for decades. Every living thing will probably die except for that one cockroach. The whole area will be radioactive, nothing will be able to live. Creatures living miles upon miles away will feel the affect of this disaster. Evolution will take place and the creatures will have to be able to adapt to the rough conditions. Plants might change do to the pollution so then the animals have to be able to eat the plants or else they won’t survive. Everything will have to be able to stand the amount of radiation being emitted. 

There doesn’t have to be a nuclear disaster to be able to see how man-made disasters attribute to ecosystem lost. The dust bowl in the 1930’s is a great example. We overwhelmed the soil then with no plants no rain fell causing a horrid drought. With the drought rough winds that the Mid-west was used to picked up all of the dried dirt and dust then threw it about. Many organisms had to seek new habitats because they just couldn’t survive the sandblasting. Grasshoppers didn’t have the grass to eat so they ate people’s clothes or anything else they could find. The one positive thing that came out of the whole dust bowl is that we realized that we have to treat the land differently then we had. Our land couldn’t withstand the European farming methods that were used so we had to adapt. 

To conclude, natural and man-made disasters do effect ecosystems in positive and negative ways.