29 July 2015

Two wonderful new landslide videos, one from Taiwan and one from Japan

Posted by Dave Petley

Landslide videos

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Two new landslide videos

Two new landslide videos are now available.  Unfortunately I cannot embed either, so you will need to follow the links.  You won’t be disappointed!

1. A dramatic rockfall in Taiwan

The image above is taken from an amazing video of a complex rock topple / rockslide from Taiwan.  The link to the video is as follows (note that this is to a Facebook page):

https://www.facebook.com/100006415001183/videos/1702681713288979/?fref=nf

This is a terrific video, showing both the power and volume of a large rockfall. Judging by the geology this is from the eastern side of central or southern Taiwan, I’d imagine probably the Southern Cross Island Highway, but possibly the Central Cross Island Highway.  The caption suggests that the crack in the slope was observed by a highway engineer and the road closed.  If so, well done that person!  I have seen the aftermath of cars being caught in an event like this on the Central Cross Island Highway on several occasions. The video will be worth detailed interpretation in the way that it shows precursory rockfall activity before the final failure, which is likely to be an indication of the way that the rock mass was straining and deforming as collapse progressed.

Thanks to James Reynolds via twitter (@EarthUncutTV) for highlighting this one.  It is likely that there are other landslide videos from this site – does anyone have a link to them?

2. The Fukaminato River landslide in Japan

In Japan, a large landslide is causing considerable problems along the Fukaminato River in Tarumizu City, Kagoshima Prefecture.  This landslide has had three large failures in the last month, of which the most recent occurred yesterday.  This landslide was caught on video – and well, what can I say.  The link is as follows:

http://news.ktstv.net/e58550.html

The very dramatic fragmentation of this landslide, and the extremely rapid runout, are fascinating.  I hope to write about this again in the next few days.

Thanks to Colin Stark of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University for highlighting this one.