30 January 2009
Name the Landslide number 1
Posted by Dave Petley
OK, a bit of fun for a Friday afternoon. The challenge is to provide via the comments section for this page, the name of the famous landslide shown on the Google Earth image below. The winner must also provide a two sentence (maximum) description of the big movement event:
Whoever gets it right gets to choose the next landslide for us to try to name. I have turned message moderating off to allow this to work. This one is not easy, but there are clues in the picture.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
Dave, Ooooh, a fun game indeed. Not my area of the world, but I recognized the Battle of Britain Memorial. Found the following information here:http://www.english-nature.org.uk/special/geological/sites/local_ID44.aspThis coastal section, comprising steep chalk cliffs and foreshore exposures is located just to the east of Folkestone. The eastern part of the site, particularly the cliffs exposing the Gault Clay and the Folkestone Beds, can be accessed from the seafront at the eastern end of Folkestone where car parking is available near to the golf course. The main mass of the Warren and the landslip can be accessed by steps that lead down the cliff from Capel-le-Ferne. Geological InterestThe coastline between Folkestone and Dover exposes rocks of Cretaceous age (142-65 million years old), including two rock exposures of particular importance. The series of cliff sections at the western end of the site, with some 50m of Folkestone Beds (Lower Greensand) and Gault, represents the most important single locality for studying these rocks in England. The Gault Clay exposures in East Wear Bay yield beautifully preserved fossils, including ammonites, bivalves and crabs and have also produced the fossilised remains of a number of types of marine reptiles including turtles, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurus and pliosaurs.The high chalk cliffs at the back of the Warren, are largely inaccessible, but are an internationally important reference site providing extensive and nearly continuous cliff and shore exposures of the Cenomanian, Turonian and Coniacian Stages of the Cretaceous Period (Lower, Middle and early Upper Chalk). The site is historically very important as many geological principles, such as using fossils as means of correlating rock sections were tested here during the early development of geology.Folkestone Warren itself consists of a series of landslides which includes both Chalk and Gault, and has probably been more intensively studied than any other landslide of comparable size in Great Britain. This is largely because it is crossed by the main Folkestone-Dover railway line, which on occasion has been displaced by slipping (notably in 1915), creating an immediate demand for detailed studies and monitoring. The site has suffered twelve major slips since 1765, and is now protected by a complex of coastal defence works.
Peter, yes quite right. Well done, this is indeed Folkestone Warren. Drop me an email if you would like to set the next one.Dave