Tectonics! Oh No!

Most people know about the major tectonic plates of the world, mostly corresponding to whole continents. But there are little plates too, ones slinking along. Thailand is on one little plate, the Sunda plate. This little plate rests in between four three plates, the Eurasian, Australian, and the Philippine.

 

 Red lines indicate a divergent boundary, green a transform fault, purple a convergent boundary, and blue with arrows a subduction zone. As you can see, the Australian and the Philippine plates are sliding underneath the Sunda plate, pushing it upwards. The Burma plate is moving away from Thailand, but shrinking from India pushing in.

Thankfully, Thailand is far enough away from the Australian plate to avoid volcanoes. Phew. That is a big relief.

Pictures taken from Google Images. Sources are from previous Geology classes, and the legend of the plate map.

Mineral Resources

While Thailand is mostly an agricultural nation, it does have a small amount of mine-able resources. Its most major productive minerals are Tin (Sn) and Tungsten (W). Thailand has one of the largest tin exports of any nation.

Thailand also has minor deposits of Copper (Cu), Zinc (Zn), Silver (Ag), and Lead (Pb). These veins are found mainly in andesite.

Coal and oil filled shale are extensive across the land, with large belts in the Northwestern regions. It is estimated that the oil reserve has 10 trillion cubic feet of gas.

There are two major gemstones mined in Thailand, sapphires, and rubies.

The final, and I suppose most exicting, (yes I saved the best for last), are the large gold deposits mined for centuries. Even now, I suppose you could say there is a bit of a Gold Rush there.

Raw gold

Sources from http://www.dmr.go.th/main.php?filename=Mineral_re_En

So. First things first, lets define our risks. I'll be talking about disasters, and hazards, and the rare catastrophe. All sorts of things are hazards, like driving. That one isn't natural though. Hazards are risky things, that don't necessarily do anything bad. Volcanoes rarely erupt. Natural disasters are hazards that actually hurt people or damage property. Catastrophes however, cause massive damage and harm tons of people.