Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Not the earthquake's fault

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 210–211 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

This article has been updated

To the Editor

The disaster that befell Haiti on 12 January 2010 was fundamentally caused by 300 years of poor governance, foreign debt and land degradation that had made the population vulnerable to natural hazards. The Mw 7.0 earthquake was only the trigger. As pointed out in the Nature Geoscience focus issue dedicated to the earthquake1, Haiti's future relies on delineating the imposing seismic hazards in the region. Yet to preclude future disasters of this magnitude, the ecohistorical roots of the society's present environmental condition must be taken into account.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Agriculture, poverty, erosion and deforestation converge at Furcy, in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Change history

  • 17 March 2011

    In the version of this Correspondence originally published online, 'cooking oil' should have read 'cooking fuel' in the caption for Figure 1. This error has now been corrected in all versions of the text.

References

  1. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/focus/haiti/index.html

  2. Moreau de Saint-Méry, M. L. E. Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la Partie Française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue (Société de l'Histoire des Colonies Françaises et Librairie Larose, 1958).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Farmer, P. London Review of Books 26, 28–31 (15 April 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Lundahl, M. Peasants and Poverty: A Study of Haiti (St. Martin's, 1979).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Crane, K. et al. Building a More Resilient Haitian State (The Rand Corporation, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Hornbach, M. et al. Nature Geosci. 3, 783–788 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Turner, B. et al. PNAS 100, 8074–8079 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Field work for this project was completed under grants awarded to L. Comfort, University of Pittsburgh, by the Widgeon and US National Science Foundations, and additional support came from a NSF Partnership for International Research and Education grant (OISE-0530151), and the Vassar College Environmental Research Institute. M. Morissaint and B. Marcelin provided field logistics. We thank N. Krenitsky, J. Augenstein and M. Siciliano for their valuable insights.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences and Geography, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 12601, New York, USA

    Brian G. McAdoo

  2. Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 12601, New York, USA

    Lisabeth Paravisini-Gebert

Authors
  1. Brian G. McAdoo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Lisabeth Paravisini-Gebert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brian G. McAdoo.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McAdoo, B., Paravisini-Gebert, L. Not the earthquake's fault. Nature Geosci 4, 210–211 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1116

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1116

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing