Tangshan earthquake

Description

Length: 5-10 pages of text, double-spaced, plus 5-10 figures that contribute information to your paper. Si vous voulez, vous pouvez rédiger votre rapport en français, comme chaque cours offert à cette université. Topic: The paper will examine a case study of a topic covered in the course. All topics should be approved by either a professor or teaching assistant. Topics should be sufficiently focussed that you can discuss specific facts rather than talking in generalities. Repeating information covered in class is discouraged (ie, don’t dwell on the mechanics of a hurricane if your topic deals with the impact of a hurricane on agriculture in a specific region). For picking a topic, a three-step process is often helpful. First, pick a type of disaster you’re interested in. Then, pick a specific instance of that disaster. Thirdly, choose a specific aspect of that disaster to talk about. Depending on the geographical size of the disaster, you may need to choose a specific geographic region too (for example, the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004). Be creative – if you’ve got an idea that you’d like to write about but aren’t sure if it’s appropriate, ask either one of the professors or teaching assistants. Here are some examples to get you started thinking: Causes and consequences of the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano, Iceland Hurricane Andrew’s impact on Florida’s agriculture Suggested mitigation efforts on near-earth objects Transmission and prevention of water-borne disease after the 2010 Haitian earthquake Damage to the power grid after the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada Famine in the Year Without a Summer (1816) Impact of the Boxing Day Tsunami (2004) on the economy of Thailand Eruption of the Lusi mud volcano, Indonesia Re-evaluation of tsunami hazard in Japan after the 2011 Tohoku/Fukushima disaster Generally, disasters that have occurred in the past few months are not good topics, as it will be difficult to find scholarly material with which to research your paper. Suggested structure: Case study papers are different than some papers you may write in university because there is not a central thesis that you are trying to develop. There’s no central argument that you’re presenting analysis for; instead, you’re presenting a picture of an event that happened, with an explanation and some analysis. As such, an essay structure is not relevant to this paper. This outline is only suggested – don’t artificially structure your paper to fit this exact form. However, the abstract is required (see below for information about writing an abstract). Please include section headings in your paper as well as a title page. For the purpose of an example, use Hurricane Andrew’s effect on agriculture in Florida as a sample topic. •Abstract (see below) • Introduction (introduce Hurricane Andrew and the sorts of agriculture in its path. Give an idea of the specifics of each – how big the hurricane was, its path, etc, as well as the types of agriculture, size of the industry, etc. Do not reiterate basic information from class about the type of disaster you are writing about, ie, don’t spend time explaining what a hurricane is and how it forms.) 10 •Description of the effect of the disaster (Was the damage just that the crops were destroyed? Perhaps there are other connections – damaged machinery, no way to harvest and distribute crops even if not totally damaged, etc. Enumerate the damage, but also think deeply about the effect of the disaster. This section should not be just a list of numbers.) •Response to the disaster / Efforts to repair the damage (How did the farmers respond? Was anything salvageable? What issues complicated their response? What problems did they have dealing with the disaster?) •Discussion (Some analysis tying together the pieces of information you’ve gathered in previous sections) •Conclusion (Summarize what you’ve discussed throughout the paper, but don’t just reiterate a bunch of numbers. Depending on the topic and writing style, your discussion may be woven into your conclusions.) •Bibliography (see below) The abstract: The abstract is a short paragraph that gives the barest of bones (ie, ~ 3-5 sentences) summary of your paper. There should be no information in the abstract that isn’t in the paper, and since it’s a summary of what you’ve written, it’s usually best to write it last. Your abstract should briefly summarize your entire paper, including any discussion or conclusions you draw. There should be no filler and no unnecessary words; it is not a place for flowery language or convoluted sentence structure. It should be either on a page of its own (not the title page) or in a labelled section above the text. If it has its own page, this page does not count as a full page in your page count. Figures: Your paper should have 5-10 figures that contribute information to your paper and are relevant to your topic. Images that are merely illustrative or only tangentially related are not encouraged. If your topic is the agricultural damage due to Hurricane Andrew, having a picture of damaged crops to show the scope of the damage would be okay. Using a picture of the damage to a subdivision, even though it gives a sense of the damage, would be less appropriate because you’re not talking about the damage to housing or communities. Images can be interspersed throughout the text, or collected at the end of the paper in an Appendix, but the text itself (ie, without pictures) should still be 5-10 pages long. Your figures should not all be similar. For example, having a single picture of a damaged community, and four other figures with different information is much better than having five pictures of damaged communities and nothing else. All figures should have a caption, and be referenced directly in the text. For example, if Figure 1 is an image of a damaged community, you may have a sentence like: “The community of was severely damaged in ; see Figure 1.” and the caption for Figure 1 may read “Figure 1: An image of shortly after hit, causing immense damage.” Your figure sources should also be listed in your bibliography. The bibliography: Your paper should be well cited, using at least ~ 10 sources. While web sources are admissible, make sure that the majority of your sources are academic (like books, journal articles, or conference proceedings) as well. Academic sources you access through the internet (like journal articles) are counted as academic sources, not web sources. Any web sources used should be retrieved from reputable sources, like government agency sites. 11 You can use any reference style you’d like, so long as all the appropriate information is given and you are consistent. Use inline citations for citations throughout your text; see below for some guidelines on citing. Inline citations should have a format of (Author’s last name, year); if the author is not given (say on a web page from a government site) use the agency’s name, for example, something from the US Geological Survey would be cited as (USGS, 2003) rather than (Anonymous, 2003). If you have more than one source from, say, the USGS from 2003, cite them as (USGS, 2003a) and (USGS, 2003b) and clearly denote which is which in your bibliography.