13 September 2013

A video of riverbank collapses in Utah

Posted by Dave Petley

Thanks to Greg Springer for the heads up on this one.  Parts of the USA have been receving exceptional levels of rainfall of late, causing flash floods and landslides across a wide area.  On September 11th, the following video of a large flood in Wahweap Creek in Southern Utah was captured by David Rankin.  The first half of the video is not particularly exciting; it gets really interesting at about 1 minute 15 seconds, when it starts to focus on riverbank failures.  The collapses in what appear to be silt terraces:

These are fascinating failures because they have been induced purely by toe support in a comparatively homogenous material. Perhaps surprising is the variety of landslide types shown, even in this comparatively simple system.