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Reminder: Earth is an Active Planet
Several years ago, I was able to travel to Lisbon to work with the Galileo Teacher Training Program. Sitting in a small cafe, I was struck by the beautiful wreckage of an old cathedral. When I asked my collaborator about it, she told me a story I’d never heard. In 1755 an earthquake struck the region, shaking the landscape for more than 3 minutes with a quake estimated to be between magnitude 8.5 and 9. With an epicenter located out to sea, the devastation didn’t end with the end of the shaking. It was followed by a tsunami … A hazard unfamiliar to Europeans. According to historical reports, water retreated from the Rio Teja estuary and revealed shipwrecks, leading thousands of confused people to race into the waterway in search of treasure. Unfortunately, a 9-m wave was on its way, and 1000s of people who survived the quake were lost to the water.
The Earthquake was on the Azores-Gibraltar fault line and there is no reason to believe such an event can’t happen again. That devastated cathedral I could see from the cafe was a reminder that our world is alive and will destroy even the most beautiful of human creations without thought or care.
And we really need to plan for these events everywhere.
During the 8th European Marine Board Forum focused on Supporting the Ocean Decade in Europe, researchers began work on a now published…
