The vast number of  landslides triggered by the May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and in its aftermath has been extensively described, not least on this blog.  One of the documented impacts of these landslides was the well-documented loss of habitat of the giant panda (A. melanoleuca) due to extensive forest loss.  However, there is a great deal more to that story than meets the eye, as a newly-published paper by Vina …

Problems continue in the earthquake affected areas of Haiti, where over 2 million people remain essentially homeless 10 months after the devastating earthquake.  Reporters Live are carrying a story that heavy rainfall in the last 48 hours has triggered two, rather different fatality-inducing landslides: 1. A collapse in a sand quarryIllegal quarrying of sand to be used for rebuilding is turning into a major, if unsurprising, problem in the hills …

A frequently-forgotten but potentially very damaging impact of large earthquakes in mountain areas is the increased occurrence of debris flows and other landslides in the following years.  Whilst these events continue to represent a hazard in their own right, they frequently also cause changes to river dynamics, with resultant high levels of damage.  This problem was illustrated all too clearly in a small village that we visited close to Beichuan …

This billboard, which predates the Darfield earthquake, was attached to a building in the Central Business District of Christchurch in New Zealand: Do you think this is what they had in mind when they described the “open plan office with balcony access” and “cool funky office environment”?:

Yesterday I was exceptionally fortunate to be able to spend the morning looking at the surface expression of the fault responsible for the Darfield earthquake, which hit the Canterbury plains area of New Zealand a fortnight ago.  I was kindly guided around by Russ Van Dissen of GNS Science, and the visit was organised by Chris Massey, also of GNS – so many thanks to them.  This GNS map shows …

Bizarrely, I am currently sitting in the QANTAS lounge at Sydney Airport waiting for a flight to New Zealand, where the IAEG Congress starts on Monday.  The theme of the conference is “Geologically Active”… So, what do we know about the earthquake so far.  The best source of information is the Geonet site – http://www.geonet.org.nz/ – which puts seismic data online in real time.  They are reporting that the earthquake …

The USGS have posted a set of images taken by Randy Jibson and Ed Harp of landslides triggered by the Haiti earthquake earlier this year.  The images may be found here: http://landslides.usgs.gov/learning/photos/international/haiti_earthquake-induced_landslides__january_12__2010 Although the occurrence of landslides was certainly lower than we might have expected, there are some interesting landslides included: A useful resource and a salient reminder of the threats that the people of Haiti face during this hurricane …

On Tuesday evening at 11:45 pm Peru suffered a Mw=6.0 earthquake 125 km (80 miles) NNW of Moyobamba in Amazonas.  This is the USGS location on a Google Earth image: The USGS record suggests that this earthquake was very deep – 132 km – which means that such an event would not normally be associated with landslides.  However, the local paper La Republica is reporting that a large section of …

This morning’s Mw=6.9 earthquake in China is now reported to have killed at least 300 people, with the toll likely to rise over the next few hours.  Although the earthquake occurred in an area with a low population total and density, vulnerability of both buildings and the landscape to shaking is likely to be high, especially given the reported shallow nature (depth = 10 km) of the event. The Google …

Although this is meant to be a blog on landslides, occasionally things appear in other areas of natural hazards that are so irritatingly ridiculous that I just can’t let them go.  And so in the last few days a story has been doing the rounds about earthquake risk to the forthcoming football World Cup in South Africa.  For example,  The Daily Star newspaper in the UK (not necessarily worth reading …