9 September 2010 20:41 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
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 …
Tags: conference, engineering geology, manual, monitoring
17 April 2010 12:12 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
A jokulhlaup is a sudden release of water from beneath a glacier. One of the key triggers for Jokulhlaup is the eruption of a volcanic beneath an icecap. It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that jokulhlaups have been triggered by the Eyjafjallajokull eruption that is causing such chaos across Europe (guess who was supposed to go to Hong Kong on Thursday…), and increasingly beyond. Now, a jokulhlaup is not …
Tags: Iceland, jokulhlaup, volcano
18 August 2009 17:44 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
For landslide scientists Taiwan has an almost mythical status, effectively being the nearest thing to a landslide laboratory. To my great benefit I have been able to work on landslides in Taiwan since 1991. As well as being a country of great beauty (there are good reasons why the Portuguese named it Ilha Formasa – Beautiful Island – in 1544), the combination of high rates of tectonic uplift, weak rocks, …
Tags: earthquake, landslide management, landslide report, planning, taiwan, typhoon
30 June 2009 08:24 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Thanks to Lynn Highland at the USGS for drawing my attention to this video of a debris flow in Costa Rica: This is a slightly strange event. It occurred on the Sarapiqui River in Costa Rica after the 16th January 2009 Cinchona earthquake. It is not all clear why the earthquake should have triggered such a debris flow given that there was no rainfall, but a suggestion is that there …
Tags: china, costa rica, debris flow, earthquake, landslide video
22 May 2009 09:59 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Yesterday there was a special session of the Sinorock Conference in Hong Kong, focused on the Wenchuan Earthquake. This involved six presentations and then a lively round-table discussion. This is a brief review. The first talk was given by colleagues from Chengdu University of Technology on the topic of the landslides triggered by the earthquake. This was visually spectacular, emphasising the scale, density and impact of the landslides that were …
Tags: china, conference report, earthquake, earthquake conference, sichuan, Wenchuan
22 May 2009 09:15 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Today there was a session on the Wenchuan Earthquake at the Sinorock conference in Hong Kong. I was invited to participate in the panel discussion, for which I put together the following presentation highlighting a few critical issues: http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=191786_633785600804989257Uploaded on authorSTREAM by Dr_Dave You should be able to review the presentation above or to download it the Powerpoint file if you wish (from here if necessary). I will write a …
Tags: china, earthquake, earthquake conference, roundtable, sichuan, Wenchuan
19 May 2009 11:49 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Some readers will be aware that there has been a rumpus during the last few months at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) over its policy not to organise and run its own expeditions. A small but influential group (the Beagle Campaign) petitioned for, and got, a Special General Meeting of the Fellows of the Society, culminating in a vote on the issue, on Monday. The resolution, which was opposed unanimously …
Tags: exploration, geography, research, RGS-IBG, royal geographical society
7 January 2009 09:05 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
At the time of the Wenchuan earthquake I posted on numerous occasions about the landslides around the town of Beichuan. One of the concerns has always been the likely behaviour of the landslides during heavy rainfall events. As part of the forthcoming Sinorock 2009 conference in Hong Kong there will be a tour to the earthquake-affected area to look at and discuss the landslides. The organisers have put together a …
Tags: 2008, china, debris flow, earthquake, sediment, sichuan, Wenchuan
21 October 2008 08:26 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Prof. ZuYu Chen has today emailed to bring to my attention a special conference session on the geohazards associated with the Wenchuan Earthquake. This will be held at the SinoRock 2009 conference in Hong Kong on 22nd May 2009. It will be followed by a field trip to the earthquake zone. Beichuan New Town landslide. Source: This is Life Blog Papers are due by 15th January 2009. Details of the …
Tags: china, conference report, earthquake, Hong Kong
25 September 2008 08:33 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
One question that I am quite often asked is why it is that fatalities in landslides occur more at night than in the day. In some ways this is counter-intuitive as one might expect that people would be safer in their houses than they are when they are out and about. At least a part of the answer lies I think in the destructive potential of comparatively slow landslides. Most …
Tags: debris flow, destruction
Recent Comments