Environmental Effects of Hurricanes Hurricanes are one of the major natural disasters that have greater effects on communities, people and residential places (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). Besides, hurricanes have intense effects on environment. The major impacts of hurricanes are found normally on coastal habitats and estuarine ecologies. The strong winds generated by hurricanes have the capability of clearing forest canopies and as such, resulting into stagy modifications in the wooded ecosystems (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). In fact, intense rainfall, strong winds and gushes in storms usually kill animals directly or indirectly through created changes in the ecosystem. Generally, hurricanes usually cut the food chain and in severe cases cause extinction of endangered species. Jensen (2009) argued that imbalances in the ecosystem caused by hurricanes have profound effects on both animals and plants. Besides, the storms are capable of transforming the coastal landscape. In essence, strong winds and dangerous waves carry huge volumes of sand, which are deposited along the coastal lines thereby reformatting the entire coastal landscape (Jensen, 2009). In most cases, hurricanes lead to massive changes in the shoreline resulting into complete alteration of the coastal habitats (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). In fact, estimates show that hurricanes normally change coastal shorelines by over one hundred meters. However, the changes caused by hurricanes differ depending on the intensity and the level of precipitation (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). In fact, hurricanes create forces that have both direct and indirect environmental reactions, which normally take shorter or longer duration (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). In terms of marine ecosystem, hurricanes are capable of affecting water quality through nutrient increases as well as sediment disturbances. Studies on the effects of hurricanes indicate that near shore water quality is affected mostly as runoffs bring more nutrients with decreased oxygenation processes (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). Principally, increased nutrient content and little oxygen decrease the salinity, which dramatically changes the near shore marine ecosystem. Besides, the increased concentration of chemicals including nitrogen and phosphorus characterize the near shore water for long periods after storm. In addition, increased nutrients result in overgrowth of phytoplankton and reduced levels of oxygen, which cause deaths of millions of marine species (Jensen, 2009). Moreover, the changes in waterways and near shore ecosystem result in the death of most of the organisms. The high currents and massive waves have greater effects on offshore marine environment. In principle, high currents often clip off various species including sponges, sea whips and corals from their substrate bases (Adams & Berry, 2012). The sheared off sponges are carried hundreds of kilometers and deposited in wide-ranging brackets of fragments along the coastlines (Kruczynski & Fletcher, 2010). Besides, the high waves and strong currents have the ability of wiping off species. For instance, Hurricane Andrew of august 1992 led to the disappearance of spiny lo