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
30 September 2008 13:00 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
The China Daily has today published an article that describes the situation around Beichuan as a result of the current heavy rains. The article is here. The situation is sounding increasingly dangerous. For example: “As a result of heavy rains and incessant mudslides, the plan to rebuild quake-devastated Beichuan county in northern Sichuan province as an earthquake museum has been put on hold, a local official said.” “A large part …
Tags: 2008, china, earthquake conference, sichuan
29 September 2008 09:11 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Reliefweb is this morning carrying a story highlighting grave concerns about the situation in Sichuan in view of recent weather. The article is here. This article appears to have originated from the Jinde charity, who are active in the earthquake affected areas. In a nutshell they are reporting that: Sichuan Province is suffering the most severe rainstorms for a century. They report that since 21st September the city of Jiangyou …
Tags: 2008, china, earthquake, landslide dam, sichuan
30 June 2008 16:13 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
This week is the 10th International Symposium on Landslides and Engineered Slopes, which is a once every four years get together. This time round it is being held in Xi’an in China, which is particularly appropriate given the recent events a few hundred kilometres to the southwest. The organisers managed to timetable a session of two keynotes and six other presentations on landslides associated withe the earthquake. The session was …
Tags: china, conference report, earthquake, International Symposium on Landslides, sichuan, xian
29 May 2008 08:03 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
NASA has now released a pair of ASTER images of the earthquake affected area. I should add that it is good to see some imagery of areas beyond Beichuan. These images really do highlight the magnitude of the landslide problem. These images are centred on the Min Jiang river, which is about 150 kilometers from the epicentre of the earthquake. For a non-specialist they look a little odd – technically …
Tags: 2008, china, earthquake, images, landslide report, sichuan
28 May 2008 07:59 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Understanding what a landslide is actually like is rather difficult when you can only see the deposit and the scar. Now, all landslides are of course different, but in the case of Sichuan we are dealing with some of the most rapid and dangerous ones. So, I thought it would be constructive to post the following Youtube video, which was taken in Malaysia in 1993. Click on it to view …
Tags: 1993, landslide video, malaysia, mining
27 May 2008 15:28 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
The BBC is carrying some interesting footage of soldiers creating a channel across a landslide deposit. This can be seen here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7421263.stm The video is at the bottom of the page. It is worth a look. The video shows soldiers digging a channel through what is apparently a landslide deposit. I am not sure which landslide this is or even what the channel is to achieve. It could be that …
Tags: 2008, china, earthquake, landslide dam, sichuan
25 May 2008 14:49 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
In view of the ongoing deep concern about the stability of the >30 landslide dams in Sichuan (now known in the press as “quake lakes”), and in particular the one upstream at Beichuan, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief review of what we know about landslide dams. First, there us a great deal of literature on this topic. For example, Schuster and Costa (1991) detailed 463 …
Tags: china, earthquake, landslide dam, sichuan
19 May 2008 21:46 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Two further images have been sent to me of giant landslides from the Sichuan earthquake. At the moment I cannot find out where they are from, although they clearly both show the same giant landslide. Note that the valley is completely filled (which means that a lake if forming somewhere upslope) and the amazing flow structures in the landslide mass. I wonder if this is the same landslide as is …
Tags: 2008, china, earthquake, images, landslide report, sichuan
19 May 2008 08:10 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
In previous posts I have warned that landslides will wreak a terrible toll in the aftermath of the earthquake. Sadly, this appears to be all too true. Xinhua is today carrying this report: More than 200 relief workers, engaged in repairing the broken roads in the quake-stricken Sichuan Province, had been buried in mud flows over the past three days, said Dai Dongchang, an official with the Ministry of Transport …
Tags: china, earthquake, landslide report, sichuan
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