I used various resources to prepare for the Environmental Risks and Hazards test (February 18th) which makes up 30% of the module grade. I began with looking at the test from last year which our lecturer posted on Study Direct. I found I could answer about half of it from my own knowledge but struggled with the other half, especially the two five mark non-multiple choice questions at the end of the test. The longer questions involved first defining a key term to the topic and then giving details of the processes (such as tropical cyclones) as well as examples.

To build upon my practice answers I referred back to the core reader “Environmental Hazards” (Keith Smith, 2013) which gave concise case studies as well as increasing my understanding of the process behind natural hazards and disasters. I found some of the geographical language on the previous test difficult to understand and used Google to define them. Generally, the questions were based on lecture content from the previous four weeks and I found looking back through my notes the most useful resource to prepare for the test. If there was anything that did not make sense in my notes I looked to the lecture slides which my professor posts on Study Direct every week. I was mostly worried about recalling definitions (such as “what is a recurrence interval?”) however a large part of the test was in fact recall of case studies and I felt fairly confident with this.