17 July 2016

Glacier Bay Landslide in Alaska: a satellite image and new videos

Posted by Dave Petley

Glacier Bay Landslide in Alaska

Slowly more information is emerging about the very large Glacier Bay landslide in Alaska, upon which I have previously blogged.  Perhaps most importantly. the landslide has now been imaged by the ESA Sentinel-2 satellite.  The image was tweeted by @RemotePixel on 14th July, with the image having been collected on 11th July 2016:

Glacier Bay landslide

The Glacier Bay landslide in Alaska, as imaged by the Sentinel-2 satellite. Hat-tip to @RemotePixel

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It is interesting to see how little this landslide spread laterally, especially on the right side of the track (the left side is clearly constrained by the topography).

In addition, there are now a couple of videos on Youtube showing aerial images of the landslide.  This one, by Jillian Rodgers of KHNS Radio, is marred by irritating music, but gives a pretty good impression of the landslide:

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It includes two really good shots of the landslide source / scar area:

Glacier Bay landslide

Still from a Youtube video of the Glacier Bay landslide in Alaska

And:

Glacier Bay landslide

Still from a Youtube video of the Glacier Bay landslide in Alaska

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Paul Swanstrom, the pilot who found the landslide in the first place, has also posted a short video of the crown of the landslide:

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This serves to rather beautifully show the immense fall height of this landslide.  Both videos also demonstrate clearly that there is still a huge amount of rockfall activity occurring on the landslide scar, and the first video suggests that a new scree deposit is accumulating on the landslide body.