Geography, more than any other discipline, has investigated the interaction of people and the environment. This is certainly true of environmental conditions that pose a threat to human life and property, conditions that have long been known as natural hazards.  Natural hazards, which consist of atmospheric, geologic, and hydrologic threats like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, landslides, floods, and wildfires, often translate into actual disasters, as Hurricane Katrina so vividly and painfully demonstrated.

In trying to analyze these threats, geographers and other scientists have sought to understand two essential elements of natural hazards:  how they occur and how we can mitigate their effects (since preventing them is all but impossible). Geography brings valuable tools to this understanding. Perhaps most critically, geographers recognize that location and proximity play crucial roles in the threat any given hazard poses to people. All of this makes GIS and remote sensing important tools for studying hazards and the disasters they spawn, since these geospatial technologies are so adept at analyzing geographic relationships, movements, and natural processes. GEO 285:  Natural Hazards explores the application of these tools to hazards, examining many recent disasters in the United States and elsewhere.

This USGS map shows the uneven geography of presidential declarations of natural disasters since 1965.