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2 November 2010
The Canterbury Earthquake: Images of the distorted railway line
A recent post was centred on images of the fault rupture of the September 2010 Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand. This post uses images provided by Malcolm Teasdale of Kiwirail to show the kine buckling that occurred on a railway track at the point that it crossed area of the surface fault expression close to Rolleston at the east end of the fault system.
26 September 2010
Images of yesterday’s landslide-induced train incidents
First, an apology in advance. I am just en route to Chengdu in China, where I will stay until Saturday. Whilst this provides an opportunity to return to Beichuan, which will be very interesting in the context of the rainfall-induced landslides this summer, it presents some other challenges. The most serious of these is that Blogger is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, so I will not be able …
Images of yesterday's landslide-induced train incidents
First, an apology in advance. I am just en route to Chengdu in China, where I will stay until Saturday. Whilst this provides an opportunity to return to Beichuan, which will be very interesting in the context of the rainfall-induced landslides this summer, it presents some other challenges. The most serious of these is that Blogger is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, so I will not be able …
25 September 2010
Three landslide-induced railway incidents in a single day
News today of three different incidents from around the world: 1. New Zealand NZ Herald reports that a milk train hit a landslide in Manawatu Gorge. Fortunately there were no injuries, or even a need to cry over spilt milk… 2. India Bangalore Mirror reports that three coaches of the Thiruvananthapuram-Mangalore Express train were buried by a landslide in a narrow cutting at Mulunthurthy. Three people were injured, plus there …
19 September 2010
Earthquake damage in Christchurch – an ironic billboard
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”?:
18 September 2010
Images of the Darfield (Canterbury) earthquake fault rupture
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 …
10 September 2010
Ruapehu lahar information
One of the many highlights of the splendid IAEG Congress in Auckland this week was a talk by GNS geologist Chris Massey on the 18th March 2007 lahar at Mount Ruapehu on North Island. The lahar occurred as a result of the failure of a tephra wall holding back the crater lake at the summit, and is shown by this NASA image: The potential for a lahar had been anticipated …
3 September 2010
Updated: The New Zealand earthquake
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 …
11 September 2009
Real time landslide monitoring in New Zealand – the Utiku landslide
I have posted previously about the near real time landslide monitoring project that is being undertaken on the Taihape landslide by the GEONET team in New Zealand. The most amazing aspect of this project is that the monitoring data is streamed onto a web server and can then be viewed using a rather neat online graphing package (available here). The great news is that the team have now instrumented another …
11 August 2009
Landslides from the Fiordland earthquake, New Zealand
GNS Science in New Zealand have released details of the mapped landslide distribution from the Fiordland earthquake on 15th July. As I noted a day later, the number of landslides appears to be surprisingly low: The earthquake produced only 187 landslides, most of which were shallow and comparatively small. The area affected by landslides was 5600 square kilometres. Comparison with the graph below (see my original posting) suggests that this …
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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