Natural hazards articles from across Nature Portfolio

The annual flood of Tonle Sap Lake supports over 20 million people’s livelihoods. Riverbed lowering due to sand mining and sediment diversion has substantially reduced the annual flood pulse and is projected to worsen if business continues as usual.

Snakebite envenoming is a significant public health problem in India, particularly in rural tropical and subtropical regions. Here, the authors report findings from a community-based cross-sectional study in India on the incidence, clinical outcomes, and costs associated with snake bites.

The aftermath of volcanic eruptions often reveals critical gaps in hazard and risk management. Effective global implementation of the lessons learned from disasters triggered by natural hazards is long overdue.

Since the 1985 Nevado del Ruiz eruption that killed over 23,000 people in Armero, Colombia, risk communication has become central to volcanic crisis management. Despite the development of effective tools and programmes for volcanic risk communication, considerable challenges remain.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Daniel Andrade (Instituto Geofísico, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador), Lucia Capra (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico), Kyoko Kataoka (Niigata University, Japan), and Anke Zernack (Massey University, New Zealand) about lahars — volcanic mud and debris flows — and the hazards they pose.

The eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia in November 1985 killed an estimated 25,000 people in the town of Armero. Forty years on, Colombia has transformed its geological risk management in the wake of this disaster, recognizing the importance of institutions, knowledge sharing and engagement with local communities.

Nature Geoscience spoke with Jonatan Lassa, a scientist working on risk and disaster governance at Earth Sciences New Zealand; Carina Farnley, an interdisciplinary scientist researching natural hazards and warning systems at University College London (UK); and Jeroen Warner, a social scientist studying disaster governance from Wageningen University (Netherlands), about how institutions, communities, and decision-making processes shape the effectiveness of natural hazard management and disaster mitigation.