22 February 2013

The Bitter Springs landslide in Arizona, USA

Posted by Dave Petley

This week a landslide has occurred on US89 south of the town of Page in the vicinity of Bitter Springs in Arizona, USA.  Whilst this was initially reported to be a sinkhole, this is very clearly a reactivation of an ancient landslide.  It has caused extensive damage to the road, which is now closed:

http://www.azdot.gov/CCPartnerships/News/NRel3399.asp

Others in the blogosphere have covered this landslide much better than I ever could, so here is a list of useful links (and thanks to several people who have helped in putting this together):

The Arizona Department of Transport has been providing updates on the landslide, which includes this video of the site:

The ADOT blog also has a nice post about the landslide, which also includes the above video;

Lee Allison, the State Geologist of Arizona, describes the landslide in a series of posts on his excellent blog,  including:

The most striking post provides an overview image of the site.  I could spend hours trying to figure out the landslide history of this area from this image:

.

Wayne Ranney provides a very elegant summary of the landslide and its setting;

GeoPracNet has a nice video of the landslide taken from a helicopter

I welcome further suggestions for useful analyses or descriptions of this landslide