CONTACT:  Patricia Viets                FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                        2/5/97

NATURAL HAZARDS ROCK NOAA WEB SITE

While avalanches, earthquakes, and tornadoes are rocking movie theaters, they are also rocking the world apart on a World Wide Web site of the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

To promote a better understanding of natural hazards, and to assist in natural hazards reduction, the data center maintains a Web site containing data on geological, meteorological, and other hazards. The site contains data and images of earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, and a host of other hazards, including mud volcanoes in Romania.

The site recently won top honors from the NetGuide on-line magazine. After visiting the site, NetGuide noted, "This whole site will rock your world. Our hearts are still pounding." Users can visit the site at: www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/hazard

NGDC is one of three major data and information centers maintained by NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. NGDC houses data in the fields of solid earth geophysics, marine geology and geophysics, solar-terrestrial physics, and paleoclimatology. NGDC fills tens of thousands of requests each month for data services and publications.

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