Thailand Floods 2011

Thailand Floods 2011

Causes of Flooding

This year, Thailand has experienced the worst flooding in a couple of decades this is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, Thailand’s geography of land is built at a downwards slope, water rains on the mountains and streams back to the gulf of Thailand – the water cycle-  for thousands of years Thailands rainforests have absorbed  up the water flowing south. As time went on mankind has expanded and chopped down the forest for space to build housing estates, dams to control the water flow and other industries. The water has reached levels that are no controllable by the dams leading to the overflow of water. Bangkok is facing a 100 billion cubic metres of water to reach to the sea, there are three ways this water can reach its destination and that is through the Choa Praya River, Tha Jeen River and Bang Pakong River. This process is estimated to take around 50 days. The government are try to stop the water from entering the city through sand bags and other ways but its seems that the water will win the fight and enter Bangkok.

Immediate	Short Term	Long Term
Loss of human life, house destroyed; offices,factories and work places halt	Homeless people could suffer from water related dieases from still water and due to a short supply of drinking water. Escaped crocodiles!	Companies have factories in the northern areas such as Honda ( the picture above) who lost a lot of money as well.
Crops and livestock are carried aways, communications could be disrupted up north.	Shortage of typical supplies, like medical supplies and also some things like prices of water goes up. Also vehicles can’t enter some areas that are affected so some people are trapped .	Thailand’s economy will lose a lot of money due to tourism decreasing due to some touristic areas being affected by the floods.
		Some Buddhist temples and statues which are hundreds of years old have been damaged à reasons for tourists not to come.

What can be done?

In a short term effect on minimizing the effects, could include Big Bags which are massive sand bags that will stop the flow of water, from advancing further while this gives us time to get a water pump and pump all the water into canals that lead into the oceans (for more reading about Big Bags http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/265967/big-bag-barrier-under-threat). Also EM balls are used as a temporary use of cleansing the waters to avert any diseases from escalating and spreading.

Using more pumps will ease the amount of water that’s entered into the three main rivers and channel them into some canals which are practically dry. This will ease the amount of water, particularly in areas that are hit hard and guide it to somewhere else where eventually it will end up in the Gulf of Thailand.

I think the Thai government should review what went wrong and try to fix it. In this case they could plant trees in the northern area therefore this will increase the capacity of water absorbed by the land and less will be in the rivers. The Thai Government wasn’t really prepared for this crisis, and in the future they should have more people who are trained to deal with disasters like this one, as a result of that the people who are trained can offer assistance, help and could even reduce the amount of deaths.

Thailand Flood Disaster

The video illustrates Thailand’s severe flood situation well and cartoon like helping people to understand it more easily. This year, Thailand has experienced the worst flooding in a couple of decades this is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, Thailand’s geography of land is built at a downwards slope, water rains on the mountains and streams back to the gulf of Thailand – the water cycle-  for thousands of years Thailands rainforests have absorbed  up the water flowing south. As tme went on mankind has expanded and chopped down the forest for space to build housing estates, dams to control the water flow and other industries. The water has reached levels that are no controllable by the dams leading to the overflow of water. Bangkok is facing a 100 billion cubic metres of water to reach to the sea, there are three ways this water can reach its destination and that is through the Choa Praya River, Tha Jeen River and Bang Pakong River. This process is estimated to take around 50 days. The government are try to stop the water from entering the city through sand bags and other ways but its seems that the water will win the fight and enter Bangkok.

Some links to the syllabus 

8.1 – collection and control of water for a variety of uses

In this case mankind tried to control the water using dams and water gates and mothernature got the better of them showing us that we can’t really control the water cycle and overcome the pressure of the water.

12.2 - strategies to control and eradicate water related diseases

Thailand isn’t at this stage yet but after a couple of weeks when the water has been standing still for a long time it could lead to diseases such as an increase in malaria and dengue fever brought on by the increase of mosquitos into water logged areas. Another consequence of water pollution would be keeping hygiene levels and also getting drinkable water and food. The ways to try and stop these dieases is to get the water out of there as fast as possible and alert people about the dangers.

4.5 – the impact of industrial development on the environment and on human activity and health

Thailands floods are all due to the fact that the rainforests could not absorb enough of the water thus leading to massive surface run off this is the impact of industrial development and the destruction of the environment due to human activity. If the trees weren’t chopped down to make room for industrial growth this flood disaster wouldn’t happen.

Nick Kimptons Visit - Reflection on Cattle Farming

After watching Food.inc I have learned some truths about heavy industrial farmers and the inhuman methods they present and use. However, there are always two sides to every story and in that American documentary the extremist side was presented to prove a point and drastically change peoples opinions. So, when Nick Kimpton - a farmer from New Zealand - came to talk about farming he presented the non extreme side of things and reassured us that most meat from New Zealand is organically grown. Although this has been very insightful on where and how the meat gets onto my plate, I still think I won't change or cut down the amount of meat I eat.

EM - Hydrosphere Questions

Explain why El Nino causes a serious decline of Peruvian Fisheries:

To begin with El Nino is a rise of the temperature of the sea and that creates convection currents because the hot air rises and the cold air sinks, the warm currents carry few minerals to the surface while the dense cold air drops with many minerals. The cold current carrying a lot of minerals is trapped under the warm current, the phytoplankton don't have enough minerals to grow in numbers due to the fact the there are few minerals on the top and phytoplankton can only live on the surface on the water to photosynthesis. If there are less phytoplankton than usual then the anchovy will have less to feed on and thus decreasing the amount in the water, with less anchovy the Fishing industry won't be as good and will fail

Suggest two ways to reduce further damage to the coastal waters:

- Warn tourists about the effects of littering and polluting, as well as the divers to not harm the coral.

- Make rules and regulations about building in the area and where to dump there sewage making sure it doesn't end up in the ocean.

IGCSE - Extreme Weather Question.

Starting with the phrase "high sea temperature', use your knowledge and the diagram to explain the formation of a cyclone

High sea temperatures make the air particles rise up into the air because they are heated and placed under a massive amount of pressure this is done by convection currents. The Air particles then gain energy leading to more particles rising, they gain this energy through latent heat energy which gives them massive amounts of kinetic energy. Latent heat energy is found when the water molecules change state and 'fuel' the cyclone with the energy they create through the change of state. When the air particles are rushing upwards they move from a low pressured area creating a vortex, this causes the cyclone to spin, as well as the Coreolis Effect.

20.1 The Concept of an Ecosystem

An Ecosystem is basically consists of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving, the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight.


We have looked at ecosystems when we created our food chains and mini ecosystems in our text books, because both topics link into each other. You can find a bit about the concept of ecosystems in the Environmental Management book in pages 176 - 177. 


There are also some youtube videos below which can help you understand more.

31/3/11 - Thursday (4:24PM)

Weather Journal - Thursday

Today is Thursday, the weather is slowly returning to normal, it is still windy and today feels a bit warmer than yesterday.

The max temperature today will be around 30 ºC at day time and the lowest will be around 22ºC. Today’s air pressure would be around 1013 mb and the visibility would be very good. Humidity levels are around 52% at day and in the Night it 

will be 93%. Wind direction is 7 mph heading NNE (North Northeast)

Today, their were hardly clouds and the sun came in intervals and at night it is predicted that we will experience no rain and no white clouds, just a clear sky.

Currently in the sky there are Cirrostratus clouds as well as very small amounts of Cirrocumulus with the cloud coverage being 30% - 40% covering making visability very .good