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20 November 2008
Images of landslides from the Wenchuan Earthquake
(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 …
17 November 2008
Colombia landslide images
On Sunday a landslide occurred in the El Polbado neighborhood of the city of Medellin in Colombia. It is believed that 12 people were killed. ArabianBusiness.com has published the following images of the aftermath of the event: It is clear that this happened in a fairly wealthy area of the town, unlike many landslides in S and C. America, which occur in the slums and garbage dumps. Steep slopes are …
8 November 2008
Recent landslide updates
A few updates on landslide events over the last few days:1. Highway 97: various newspapers now report that the teams trying to stop the movement of the slope are making headway. The rate of movement has now slowed to about 8 mm per day (half of the rates measured early in the crisis). The drilling and blasting crews have now moved 5,000 cubic metres per day from the crown to …
27 October 2008
Rockfall sequence in Yosemite
Geology.com has a spectacular sequence of images of a rockfall in progress in Yosemite National Park that are well worth a look. The images (which are explicitly copyrighted, so I have not reproduced them here) were collected by a well-known photographer, Herb Dunn, in the canyon of the Merced River. The pictures show a fall from what appears to be a previously active rockfall scar. Below the scar there is …
8 October 2008
8th October 2008 – two important dates
The third anniversary of the Kashmir EarthquakeToday is the third anniversary of the Kashmir earthquake disaster, in which over 79,000 people were killed. Of these, about a third (i.e. about 26,000) were killed either directly or indirectly by landslides. To mark the occasion, the images below, which I took in January 2006, show some of the slope failures that occurred. Whilst Pakistan has undoubtedly put a great deal of effort …
4 September 2008
The physics of landslides…
This is a nice illustration that the physical rules that control landslides are the same the world over (or that journalists play games occasionally…). Below is the well-known USGS image of the 1995 La Conchita landslide in California: Compare the above image with this Telegraph Calcutta picture of a landslide at St Antony’s Colony in Munnar, India. Almost a mirror image! Hmmm…….!
30 July 2008
Some landslide images from the Alps
Well, I am finally back – apologies for the prolonged absence! It will take me a day or two to get back up to speed, but in the meantime I thought I’d post four landslide images from Switzerland and France that I took whilst on holiday (I have a very long suffering family…). In each case you can click on the image for a better view. Please feel free to …
17 June 2008
Recent landslide round-up
Just a quick post to highlight some of the more notable recent fatal landslides as we move into the Asian rainy season: 07th June 2008: Castle Peak, Hong Kong: A man and woman were killed in Hong Kong on Saturday when severe rainstorms caused a landslide that crushed the hillside hut they were living in (Reuters image below): 07th June 2008: Wangkha, Bhutan: Fourteen Indian labourers working on a hydropower …
29 May 2008
NASA imagery of Sichuan landslides
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 …
23 May 2008
New images of Beichuan and its lakes
CCTV has posted the following image of the lake at Beichuan: Meanwhile Reuters have published this image, captioned: “An aerial view of the roofs of houses in earthquake-hit Beichuan, Sichuan province May 20, 2008. The houses, which were originally built next to a reservoir, were uprooted and floated downriver after water levels started to rise.” I suspect that by reservoir they mean river? AP has this image of the landslides …
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
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