A report on the first landslide session from AGU 2011.

Apologies for the low rate of posting this week – it has been a busy one!  These are the key stories that have caught my eye: 1. A Congressional landslide briefing, USA Thanks to Lee Allison (check out his terrific, pioneering Arizona Geology blog) for the heads-up on this one.  On 21st June an event was held in Washington to provide a public briefing on landslides as a stealth hazard.  …

The website of the latest in an excellent set of Canadian conferences on slope stability and instability is now available at the following link: http://www.slopestability2011.ca/ The meeting will be held on 18th-21st September 2011 in Vancouver.  The focus is on  Rock Slope Stability in Open Pit Mining and Civil Engineering.  The call for papers is now out, with abstracts due by 31st December 2010.  This meeting serves as a nice aperitif to the …

1. Please vote for a slope monitoring projectOne of the recurrent themes of the IAEH Congress is the growing importance of slope monitoring techniques to provide warning of the development of failure.  One of the most exciting projects is the ALARMS project, led by Prof. Neil Dixon at Loughborough University, which is developing techniques that use acoustic emissions to monitor slope movements.  The project has been entered into an Enterprise …

Whilst pushing my five year old daughter on the swing the other day (a task that leaves plenty of time to think!), I was pondering upon the greatest landslide papers of all time. I thought that it would be interesting to compile a list and invite suggestions of alternatives. So, here is my list, in no particular order: 1. Terzaghi on the principle of effective stressIn 1936 Karl von Terzaghi …

First, apologies if my posts are a little sporadic (and if I am not replying to your emails). I am currently on leave in the Swiss Alps. However, I will continue to make short posts over the next fortnight, especially in light of the Taiwan landslides. Thanks again to Tsou Ching-Ying of Kyoto University for bringing to my attention a Youtube video of the Shiaolin site. This is of course …

Xinhua is now reporting that 79 people have been killed in the catastrophic landslide in Chongqing. In addition, 27 miners are trapped in a mine whose adit has been buried. Xinhua has also released an image of the source zone of the landslide (showing continued rockfall activity): And also the landslide deposit. It is now appears that this is a massive and catastrophic rock slope failure:

In July 2003 a landslide occurred on the Pareechu stream at 32.322N, 78.735E, a remote tributary of the Satluj River in Tibet (see Fig. 1). The landslide was quite large, blocking the river and allowing a lake to form that eventually breached. In this post I will try to use the range of satellite imagery and reports that are now available to describe the sequence of events. Fig. 1: Google …

This is the first of my series of photographic reviews of the earthquake affected area in Sichuan Province. The other sets are as follows:Part 1 (this part): Beichuan town Part 2: The Tangjiashan landslide Part 3: Hanwang town Part 4: The Mianyuanhe area Part 5: The Xingyiu area Thanks to my friends in the State Key Laboratory for Geohazards at the Chengdu University of Technology I have spent the last …

One of things that students often struggle to understand is the ability of slopes that appear to be extraordinarily unstable to remain standing for long periods. Take for example this site, taken from this site: You might (quite reasonably) ask how it is that some of the blocks on this slope can possibly remain in place through strong winds, heavy rain, snow, ice and rapid temperature changes. However, the combination …