You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Landslides’ category.
The M=7.4 that struck just offshore western Guatemala yesterday is now believed to have killed at least 48 people, with more people thought to still be buried in the rubble. The location of the epicenter of the earthquake, as measured by the USGS, indicates that there is high ground within the area that might be expected to have suffered high peak ground accelerations (as the Google Earth perspective view below shows), indicating that landslides are likely:
Inevitably, the area affected by landslides is both remote and inaccessible in the aftermath of the earthquake, so a proper understanding of the landslides will take some time. In the meantime, there is some evidence that landslides have been a significant problem. The BBC has two images that show landslides. Read the rest of this entry »
This past weekend has seen substantial landslide incidents around the world. Here are just a few of them, in no particular order:
1. An ongoing local landslide emergency in Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada
Thanks to Andrew Giles for highlighting this one. The town of Quesnel in British Columbia, Canada has declared a local state of emergency because of a landslide dam that is partially blocking a river, Baker Creek, upstream of the town:
The concern is that the blockage could fail quickly, releasing a flash flood that would affect houses downstream. However, it should be noted that the dam is considered to be unlikely to fail rapidly, and that the peak flood is expected to be less than that experienced during flood season. Read more
Eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington, USA in 1980.
IHRR was very pleased to welcome Prof Sue Kieffer from the University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign as a COFUND Senior Research Fellow. During her time in the Institute, Sue researched highly energetic geologic events, particularly comparing and contrasting the behaviour of torrential river floods with that of large landslides. Sue is one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid dynamics that addresses dynamic surface processes, such as movement of water and wind and the dynamics of volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts. Her work has made a large impact on the geosciences, especially understanding the geologic processes that lead to different kinds of hazards, such as floods and landslides. Sue’s research spans terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial environments as her geyser theory developed early in her academic career was applied to the study of volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Also, her shock wave theory was used to study the historic eruption of Mt St Helens and the massive flood on the Colorado River in 1983. Read more
