You are browsing the archive for erosion Archives - AGU Blogosphere.
20 March 2020
Sinking ships to stop erosion
Sinking ships to stop erosion: the banks of the River Severn in England have been protected from landslides by sinking disused barges, creating a graveyard of old vessels
8 October 2019
Samothraki: the role of goats in increasing landslide hazard
Samothraki: on a small Greek island, uncontrolled grazing of goats has led to a catastrophic increase in landslide hazard
15 December 2017
Coastal erosion threatens archaeological sites along Greenland’s fjords
Hundreds of archaeology sites lie along the shores of Greenland’s fjords and coasts, revealing the entirety of the country’s ancestral cultures from as many as four thousand years ago. Coastal erosion, however, may soon drop many of those ancestral links into the ocean.
7 September 2017
Increases in wildfire-caused erosion could impact water supply and quality in the West
A growing number of wildfire-burned areas throughout the western United States are expected to increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, causing more sediment to be present in downstream rivers and reservoirs, according to a new study.
24 April 2017
Study finds pond expansion a significant factor in loss of Mississippi delta land
Wind-driven expansion of marsh ponds on the Mississippi River Delta is a significant factor in the loss of crucial land in the Delta region, according to new research. The study found 17 percent of land loss in the area resulted from pond expansion, much of it caused by waves that eroded away the edges of the pond.
1 March 2017
New images reveal the scale of damage to the Oroville spillway
Flow has been temporarily stopped down the Oroville Spillway in California, allowing the magnitude of the damage to be assessed.
14 February 2017
The enormous scale of the erosion problem at the Oroville Dam site
Images that have appeared online over the last 24 hours dramatically illustrate the vast scale of the erosion problem at the Oroville dam site
10 February 2017
Oroville Dam: extraordinary erosion, and a crisis, on the spillway
At the Oroville Dam in Calfornia an extraordinary crisis has developed as the spillway undergoes massive, flood-induced erosion
6 January 2017
Collapsing Arctic coastlines
In a paper just published in Nature Climate Change, Michael Fritz and colleagues have highlighted the environmental impacts of collapsing Arctic coastlines.
13 September 2016
Fungi make steep slopes more stable
Fungi are fantastic. They give us beer, bread and cheese. And if those delicious reasons aren’t sufficient, then here’s another: a new study suggests some fungi can help prevent shallow landslides and surface erosion.
7 September 2016
Why maintaining forest roads is important – a large landslide triggered by a small culvert failure
Why maintaining forest roads is important – a large landslide triggered by a small culvert failure in the Six Rivers National Forest in California
13 August 2016
Freshwater: a nice landslide video from the Isle of Wight
Freshwater, Isle of Wight Isle of Wight Radio has a nice video, taken by a walker on the beach at Freshwater, of a cliff collapse event. The video was uploaded onto Facebook by Phil Baldwin, who was collecting fossils on the cliff face. ITV News has a nice report that provides more detail about what happened. Phil Baldwin has also uploaded some images of the aftermath of the landslide onto …
22 April 2016
It’s Mud Season on Lake Erie
This (above) is a MODIS satellite image of Lake Erie taken April 15, 2016. It clearly shows sediment entering the lake from major rivers and tributaries. The brownish hues on the land surface indicate “leaf off,” dead or dormant plant cover, and bare-ground agricultural fields. Later in the summer, the tawny sediment plumes of spring will give way to verdant swirls of nuisance algae blooms, like this: Between mud season …
18 April 2016
Post-wildfire erosion can be major sculptor of forested mountains
Erosion after severe wildfires can be the dominant force shaping forested mountainous landscapes of the U.S. Intermountain West, new research suggests. After the 2011 Las Conchas fire in New Mexico, soil and rock eroded from burned watersheds more than 1,000 times faster than from unburned watersheds nearby, the new study found. Most of the erosion happened in the first year after the fire.
17 January 2013
The two-faced crust of Mars
I am always a sucker for research that uses very simple observations to come to profound conclusions, and that is definitely the case with “The dual nature of the martian crust: Young lavas and old clastic materials” by Josh Bandfield, Chris Edwards, David Montgomery, and Brittany Brand. This paper suggests that the martian crust has a dual nature, where the oldest rocks are actually softer and easier to erode, while more recently lava flows have led to much more durable terrain.
