Hi again Colleagues,
not sure what happened to the first one, so will try once more. I'm sure
someone can help me.
I've been doing anthropological fieldwork for the past 8 months in
Adapazari, Turkey, on perceptions of risk and vulnerability among students
and staff at Sakarya University, and residents of Adapazari. Adapazari, as
some of you will know is a city of some 370,000 people, close to Izmit, and
was very severely affected by the Marmara Earthquake of 1999. As I've been
working in the city and surrounds i've noticed that many of the old trees,
particularly the Platanus Orientalis, the chenar, survived the quake very
well. In fact so many of them survived, that i went back to the archives of
photos taken after the quake, and i found that many of the buildings that
were close to rows of street trees and those with large established garden
trees had NOT collapsed, although some were leaning, they had not fallen,
while others with no surrounding trees had completely collapsed. Is this
just coincidence, or is it possible that some tree root systems perhaps
formed a protective network during the quake. I spoke to a town planner here
recently, who said that chenar roots were often known to invade building
foundations. Has anyone done any work in this area? If there are
connections, are there any implications for reducing risk by...a.) planting
more trees of specific varieties in high risk areas... and b.) for
building/engineering practices???
I look forward to your (much more expert than mine) responses
Chhers, Riki Marten
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