La Furia de Nuestra Madre Tierra

If our planet is a sleeping giant, it slumbers fitfully. Earth's fabric isshifting, creaking, and groaning. Continents rub against continents.Mountains creep higher. Under the oceans, volcanoes boil. We live on apatchwork of gigantic plates that jostle one another like the pieces of arickety jigsaw puzzle. Beneath them rages fiery magma. Eons of risingpressure can explode in a single moment of cataclysmic force that disfiguresthe landscape. These brutal events are extrememly difficult to predict, andvirtually impossible to resist. And when the giant stirs beneath inhabitedareas, inevitably, people die. Recently, with absolutely no warning, a 32-foot high wall of watercrashed onto the coast of Papua, New Guinea, killing thousands. In 1991, Mt.Pinatubo in the Phillipines spewed forth a volcanic eruption so great inmagnitude that the ash dispersed in the atmosphere caused global cooling forover a year. In 1995, a 6.9 earthquake struck Kobe, Japan, killing over5,000 people and racking up $200 billion in damage. Much of what we knowtoday about earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis is based on powerful andoften tragic events such as these. While scientists today are better able toidentify and monitor potential hazards, prediction of the timing, intensity,and character of such events remains yet elusive. Plumbing the depths,scientists can unearth clues to the past and the future buried withingeologic deposits; underwater seismographs monitor the motion in the ocean;and with each rumble and tremor, scientists are learning more about whatmakes these disasters tick. In this book, Dr. Ellen Prager brings togetherthe top scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the NationalOceanographic and Atmospheric Association to examine the nature of theseunpredictable and destructive forces. From the Earth's evolution and platetectonics, to disaster warning signs and in-depth examination of recent andhistorical catastrophic events, Furious Earth is a complete guide to thestory and the science behind earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.