A distinguished professor of Earth and planetary sciences and former director of UCSC’s Institute of Marine Sciences, Griggs puts the natural disasters of recent decades into historical context in his latest book, Between Paradise and Peril: The Natural Disaster History of the Monterey Bay Region.
“I realized people are inherently interested in natural disasters and in the history of their local area,” he said.
The collective memory of natural disasters tends to fade rapidly, however, and recurrent events such as floods and coastal storm damage take many people by surprise despite their long and well-documented histories. Griggs said he hopes the book will raise awareness of the vulnerability to natural disasters that goes hand in hand with the natural beauty of the Monterey Bay region, noting that Santa Cruz County arguably has more geologic hazards per square mile than any of California’s other 57 counties.
The book is well illustrated with more than 200 photos Griggs culled from his own collection and from various regional archives. After a thorough introduction to the region’s natural hazards, the book offers a deep dive into each category of hazards in chapters on earthquakes, tsunamis, coastal storms and shoreline erosion, flooding, landslides and mudflows, and droughts. A final chapter addresses how the risks from some natural disasters are being heightened by climate change.
The consequences of climate change include sea-level rise, warmer temperatures, and changing precipitation patterns. Events such as drought, flooding, wildfires, and coastal storm damage are likely to increase in frequency and intensity. At the same time, the population of the Monterey Bay region has grown tremendously in recent decades, putting a much larger number of people at risk from natural hazards.
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Griggs will be speaking about his new book at Bookshop Santa Cruz on November 8 and at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center on November 29.