Natural Hazards in the Albanian Area of Lake Ohrid

Abstract The Albanian part of the Lake Ohrid area is endangered by several natural hazards like: floods, landslides, rock falls, erosion and wild fires. Those events have caused environmental, social and economical damages, so it’s important to study the factors that had caused them, their costs and the measures that should be taken to prevent, or to reduce their impact. Most of those events have been triggered by climate change, increasing of human pressure on land and unplanned urban development. Rapid urbanization of latest years has imposed people to build their homes or other activities on unsafe places. Climate change is another factor that has influenced in floods and droughts. The presence of the mountainous relief in the Western part combined with damage of vegetation cover, plays an important role in generating landslides and erosion of land. Natural hazards map of this area, created with GIS, shows where are distributed and which are the zones that can be caught by one of those events. Through this map the habitants of this area and local authorities, will know the risks and take necessary measures to prevent those events. Objectives of this study are to determine the risked areas and measures to minimize damages in life losing, economy and environment.