This is the latest in my occasional series on the depiction of landslides in art. The previous parts of this series are here:Part 1Part 2 Today I turn to a classic painting from the 19th Century, painted by Lord Frederic Leighton, entitled “On the Coast, Isle of Wight”: This oil sketch, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, shows a stretch of the Isle of Wight coastline in southern …

Thanks to Rhiannon George of Meridian Geoscience for her help with this – the images and most of the information have been provided by her. The press coverage of the recent (English) all time record rainfall event in Cumbria (in the area most commonly known as the Lake District in NW England) has focused upon the disastrous floods at Cockermouth. However, less well reported is the extensive devastation up in …

Like 16,000 other Earth and environmental scientists, I am heading off next week to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which is held in San Francisco. I have attended several times before – it is an amazing meeting – but this year there is added spice provided by the new Natural Hazards grouping, which means that there is far more of interest for me. The landslide specific session …

On Friday I gave a public lecture at the Badbury Centre in North Yorkshire (NE England), looking at the potential impacts of climate change on coastal erosion. The presentation was focused on the field site that we maintain at Boulby, close to the lecture venue. In the presentation I start by looking at our landslide database and then go on to talk about climate change. The main part of the …

Updated to include the afternoon sessionsThis week is the annual European Geosciences Union assembly in Vienna. This is the biggest annual landslide meeting – there are >300 landslide related papers this time around – and since I am the scientific secretary for the landslide session I cannot allow the opportunity to comment on what I see to pass. So here are my thoughts on Day 1. My intention is not …

Richard Tieuw and several of my former colleagues at the Geohazard Reserach Centre at Portsmouth University in southern England have published a nice, short article in EOS looking at issues associated with the generation of tsunamis by coastal landslides. EOS is subscription only, but the article has been covered quite well by New Scientist (available online here), although they look at a particular aspect (see below). First, let’s take a …

The Daily Telegraph is today carrying an obituary of Sir Alan Muir-Wood. Whilst Sir Alan will be best remembered as one of the modern-day fathers of tunnelling, his early work was focused on erosion on the south coast of England. For example, he was responsible for developing an understanding of the Folkestone Warren landslide in Kent in SE England (see image below), and for many other coastal slopes beside. His …

As someone interested in earth processes, one of the great powers of the internet is the ability to access quickly images of places in which I am interested. Over the last few years my colleagues and I have been studying rockfall processes at the town of Whitby in N. Yorkshire, which is in NE. England. I thought as a bit of fun I would compare two images of the cliffs …

The BBC is carrying a quite interesting story at the moment about the use of artwork from the nineteenth century to evaluate rates of coastal erosion. The story originates from Robin McInnes, who is an established figure in coastal management. Robin was the Coastal Manager for the Isle of Wight, in southern England for many years, during which he led the way in terms of developing an understanding and management …

Back in August I posted on the strange phenomenon of burning landslides. This is an interesting and surprisingly common phenomenon in which a slope failure exposes materials in the soil or rock that oxidises to generate large amounts of heat. At times this effect can be strong enough to actually ignite – in Dorset in England for example organic matter in the Kimmeridge Clay (which is the main source rock …