**2. Methodology**

To conduct the study, the team examined the same basic setting as Warren Manning [31]. The investigatory team gathered public data concerning a set of landscape hazards across the lower 48 of the United States, including: earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, flooding, volcanoes, radon, air pollution, avalanche, landslides, sinkholes, and blizzards [32–40]. The maps were drawn in layers with three values: high risk (medium gray with a 10–200 year time frame), moderate risk (light gray 500 year time frame), and low risk (white great than 500 year time frame), similar to Burley and Burley [18]and McHarg [14]. The model to compile the maps in a series of overlays was similar to Johnson and Burley, where the most hazardous value (a medium gray) across the overlays determined the hazard risk for a location [41]. Only locations with no high (medium gray) or moderate hazard rating (light gray) would receive a low (near white) hazard rating [41]. Locations with no value in the hazardous rating and with a maximum of a moderate rating would appear in the results map a moderate rating. For example, a site with a moderate earthquake score and all other scores being low, would be rated as a moderate (light gray) hazardous area. No effort was made to derive weighted maps or maps with linear combinations. As of yet, no investigator has demonstrated that the hazard layers should be combine in some latent dimension or equation. Although in the future, investigators might explore statistical relationships amongst the variables, as other investigators had done in visual quality and soil reclamation studies [42, 43]. The late Phil Lewis did discover that wetlands, slopes that require protection, and recreational lands covaried forming corridors, suggesting a latent dimension in environmental conservation and recreation to for greenways [44]. But so far, no such work has been accomplished with hazard data. In this hazard study the resulting map in this investigation may appear with many levels of gray (darker indicate many hazards and white indicating no hazards).
