You may have noticed that the number of posts on this blog has dipped of late. My apologies for this – we learnt just before Christmas that my seven year old son Adam needed open heart surgery, which was undertaken earlier this month. I am glad to say that it was a complete success and he has today returned to school, so normal service will hopefully be returned. So, I …

At recent edition of Science carries a really intriguing review piece that examines the triggers of the Wenchuan earthquake. Although earthquake triggering is really beyond the scope of this blog, the huge number of devastating landslides that the earthquake induced means that this is of interest. The article can be read online here. The article has emerged from work undertaken at two different locations. Christian Klose of Columbia University presented …

Two interesting landslides to report in the last few days. 1. Landslide in Iztapalapa, Mexico CityOn Thursday morning a 50 cubic metre landslide in the Itzapalapa, a poor suburb of Mexico City slid onto a house at the toe of the slope, killing two people. Chinagate has published a rather dramatic picture of the site: The interesting thing about this image is the very large (apparently 5 m high) retaining …

Given the time of year, I thought I would try to put together ten resolutions that could lead to a decrease in the impact of landslides. They are in no particular order and apply at a range of scales. I would welcome any comments. Before building infrastructure, we should always map the slopes to check for potential or actual landslides. This is not a complex or difficult thing to do, …

A few months ago Shaanxi Province in China suffered a dreadful flowslide when the dam holding back mine wastes collapsed, releasing an avalanche of material onto the town below. About 260 people were killed. On 22nd December, what appears to be a similar failure occurred at Knoxville in Tennessee, USA, when the retaining wall holding back coal ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Steam Plant in Harriman power station …

So here are the scores on the doors for fatal landslides in 2008. First the statistics:Number of fatal landslides: 48Number of fatalities: 396. This is the map of the fatal landslides themselves (click on the map for a better view): As is normal for this time of year the spatial dsitribution is quite scattered, with slides occurring in SE. Asia, S. Asia and C./S. America. This year there has been …

Tomorrow (Friday) I am giving a talk at Hazards Day in Manchester for AS/A2 students (year 12 and Year 13 in the UK system). The topic is the hazards associated with the Wenchuan (Sichuan) Earthquake in China. I have uploaded the file below: http://www.authorstream.com/player.swf?p=113874_633633648527967500Uploaded on authorSTREAM by Dr_Dave This talk will be repeated at an event in London on Thursday 4th December.

ChinaDaily is carrying the image below of an large rockfall in a former quarry in Fengshan County of Guangxi Province in China: The accompanying report says that the landslide occurred without warning and without an obvious trigger in a long-abandoned quarry. The volume of the landslide is reported to be 21,000 cubic metres. It buried 300m of road, 16 buildings, two tractors, a car and a motorbike. Sadly, five people …

(In response to requests, I have edited the post to provide some comments on the images) I am in the middle of putting together a presentation on the impact of the Wenchuan Earthquake in China in May and thus have been looking for suitable materials. I stumbled across a fantastic Powerpoint presentation with images of the aftermath of the earthquake – this can be downloaded here. There are a number …

Here are my views of the Sendai landslide conference. The meeting was entitled “The First World Landslide Forum Satellite Conference”, with the theme of “Management of Landslide Hazard in the Asia-Pacific Region”. There were over 200 delegates from more than 30 countries, with many (but not all) Asia Pacific countries represented. The first memorable contribution was the short but sweet keynote by Alexander Strom. It is being argued by some, …