Haiti: Biography of Haiti

Official Name: Republic of Haiti

Form of government: Republic

Capital: Port-Au-Prince

Population: ~9,035,536

Official languages: French, Creole

Money/Currency: Gourde

Area: 10,714 square miles

Geography

Haiti is in the western one-third of the island of Hispaniola between the Caribbean sea and the North Atlantic ocean. This small, tropical country is west of the Dominican Republic and is south of Cuba. Haiti is a very mountainous land. The mountain peaks reach over 8000 feet.

Nature

The tropical climate and trade winds produce warm temperatures for most of the year. The country is moutainous, but the coastline is flat and rich in sea life and coconut trees. Royal palm trees are prevalent here and can reach 60 feet tall. There has been mass deforestation in order to make way for farm land and provide supplies for the population.

History

Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, and Haiti became a Spanish colony. The Spanish committed a mass amount of genocides against the native people,enslaved the Afrikans, and imported them to work in the colony. The French took over the colony in the 1600s and increased production in many crops such as coffee, cotton, and sugarcane. The enslaved Afrikans revolted against French rule and gained independence from France in January 1804.

In 1957,dictator Francois Duvalier ruled the country,and deep poverty was hidden by strong government controls. The government killed many people disagreed with Duvalier's government. Many Haitians left the country and moved to safety in other countries. Duvalier's government ended in 1986.

People & Culture

The people in the north have a Creole accent, and are influenced by the Dominican Republic neighbors. The population is 95% black and 5% white.Haitian parents, like most other parents are strict, but very affectionate. The extended family often lives with the family in tight quarters. Haitians attend folk dances and voodoo ceremonies. About half the population practices voodoo,which is a mixture of traditions that many enslaved Afrikans brought to the island that were merged with Catholic beliefs. carnival and new year's day are the biggest holidays for most Haitians. The Haitian diet consists of local vegetables and fruits, along with some spicy meat dishes.

Government & People

The president is elected every five years unlike the United states. Haiti is said to be the poorest country on the western Hemisphere, with 80% of the population living in poverty. About two-thirds of the population live off substance farming and are vulnerable to frequent storms, which destroy their cops and erode their land.The government relies on aid from international groups. Most of the population works in the farming sector. Haiti produces mangoes, sugarcane, rice, corn, sorghum, and wood.

an earthquake is a sudden, rapid shaking of Earth caused by the breaking and shifting of rock beneath the Earth's surface

The Earthquakes disrupt society by causing mass numbers of deaths of human life. Social and economic consequences include unemployment, loss of shelter, a poor economy, and waste of money and energy.

Earthquakes are caused when tension is released from the rocks in the Earth's crust and upper mantle. This tension is due to friction between large plates floating on magma on the Earth's surface, sometimes it happens when the rocks in the earth's crust bend and break,this causes shock waves to travel on the earth's surface

another word for earthquake is tremor

earthquakes occur very frequently, because in the cases some, only machines can detect, so there might be an earthquake right now, but we can't feel it

Earthquakes frequently occur most at areas along the pacific rim, the Mediterranean, and middle east regions

the earthquake in Haiti was more destructive compared to other places because it had a magnitude of 7.0, above the average 3.0

eighty percent of earthquakes occur along the edges of the pacific plate

earthquakes cannot be predicted or prevented because they are a natural disaster

Alfred Wegner first theorized earthquakes

some types of earthquakes are volcanic,tectonic, and explosion

three main types of plate boundaries are divergent boundaries; convergent boundaries; and transform boundaries

three main fault groups are dip-slip fault, trancurrent or strike-slip fault, oblique-slip

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake ripped the ground open at 4:53 p.m. Jan. 12, 2010. The government raised its death toll estimate Wednesday to more than 316,000, but it did not explain how it arrived at that number.

The earthquake exploded in a previously undiscovered fault, just 8.1 miles below the surface and 15 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital and home to a third of the country's population.

Residents first heard a distant rumbling that reminded many of a passing truck. Then it blasted through everything like an atomic explosion, shattering walls, leveling hillside after hillside of fragile concrete homes and bringing many of Haiti's largest and most important buildings to the ground.

When it was over, a cloud of dust hung over the city, making it impossible to breathe. Those inside the destroyed cities and the even harder-hit towns to the west were trapped if not literally under the rubble then in a bleeding, screaming island region cut off from the world as the sun quickly dipped below the horizon.

A year after the quake, workers are still finding bodies in the rubble. About a million people remain homeless. Neighborhood sized camps look like permanent shantytowns on the fields and plazas of the capital. A cholera epidemic that erupted outside the quake zone has killed more than 3,600 people, and an electoral crisis between President Rene Preval's ruling party and its rivals threatens to break an increasingly fragile political stability.

It took until Wednesday for Haiti's government to lay the cornerstone for a new National Tax Office. The earthquake shattered the old building, where many workers were killed in one of the blows to the public sector that helped paralyze the government following the earthquake.

Aftershock- a smaller earthquake following the main shock of a large earthquake.
Body wave is a seismic wave that moves through the interior of the earth, as opposed to surface waves that travel near the earth's surface.
Elastic rebound model- theory states that as tectonic plates move relative to each other, elastic strain energy builds up along their edges in the rocks along fault planes
Epicenter- the point on the earth's surface vertically above the focus of an earthquake.
Focus- the point of origin of an earthquake
Lithosphere- the rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.
Modified mercalli intensity scale-The effect of an earthquake on the Earth's surface
Richter scale- a numerical scale for expressing the magnitude of an earthquake on the basis of seismograph oscillations. The more destructive earthquakes typically have magnitudes between about 5.5 and 8.9; the scale is logarithmic and a difference of one represents an approximate thirty fold difference in magnitude.
Secondary effects- effects from the earthquake
Seismic gap theory- Theory predicting the relative size and frequency of earthquakes in a given area, depending on the size and the frequency of other earthquakes in the area.
Seismograph-an instrument that measures and records details of earthquakes, such as force and duration.
Subduction zone-The subduction zone is the place where two lithosphere plates come together, one riding over the other.
Surface waves-A surface wave is a seismic that is trapped near the surface of the earth.
Theory of plate tectonics- is a theory of geology that has been developed to explain the observed evidence for large-scale motions of the Earth's lithosphere.

Haiti

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Biography of Haiti

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