Item Detail
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12142
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0
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0
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English
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Historical Earthquakes in Salt Lake City, Utah : Event and Institutional Response
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Boulder, Colorado
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University of Colorado
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Ph.D. diss.
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"The research focuses on the geographic theme of environmental/societal interaction and in doing so integrates aspects of both physical and human geography. The study examines the importance of ongoing environmental and societal processes relative to the geophysical and societal elements of the earthquake hazard. Specifically, the study establishes and analyzes patterns of intensity distribution from historic earthquakes in the Salt Lake City, Utah, urban area to determine the relation of site response to damage. In addition, the institutional response of the Mormon Church to the earthquake hazard is analyzed within a dynamic structural model developed in the study for the explanation of interactive societal and environmental processes. Intensity distributions from damaging earthquakes are quantified by using the Modified Mercalli scale and intensities are mapped at a scale of 1:24,000. Observed and calculated intensities are found to increase across the city from east to west by 2 to 3 units and from north to south by 1 to $1{1over2}$ units. The distribution of intensity is found to correlate with characteristics and depth of surficial geologic materials. These findings correlate with instrumental site response studies from the region and, therefore, provide a scaling for those studies. In regions where background noise may interfere with instrumental seismic readings, the method of historic intensity research employed in this study will be valuable for risk assessment. In examining the institutional response of the Mormon Church to the earthquake hazard, the structuralist concept of mentalite, or the collective psychocultural structure of a group, is used as the most appropriate framework for analyzing that response within the study's dynamic interactive structural model. Primarily, the response of the church to earthquakes, as well as other natural and technological hazards, is mediated by the pervasive mentalite. Although mentalite contributes to greater preparedness by the church, Mormon religious doctrine and practice prohibit the church from taking an active role in earthquake hazard reduction in coordination with government agencies or private relief organizations. Strategies suggested in this study for earthquake hazard reduction aimed at complementing Mormon religious mentalite, rather than working against it, will be more successful." [Author's abstract]