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15 September 2009
Interesting landslide footage from La Jolla, California
Image from here The La Jolla landslide in San Diego California occurred in October 2007, destroying three houses and a road, and leaving many more damaged. The landslide is currently the subject of a lawsuit that was filed by the householders. I am not going to comment further on the slide whilst this is going on, but as part of the evidence in the case some mobile phone footage has …
3 September 2009
On the dangers of Rhododendrons!
Rhododendrons are one of those plants that, when planted well, can create an amazing garden: (from: http://www.kelleriisgaarden.dk/rhododendron-eng.html) However, it might surprise you to hear that they can be a major cause of landslides. As the image below shows, rhododendrons are increasingly grown on the mountain slopes of the Appalachians: (from: http://toursinthesmokymountains.com/SmokyMountainsInDepth.aspx) As well as creating a somewhat beautiful landscape, rhododendrons have been grown in the Appalachians as a result of …
5 May 2009
Nailing Jell-o to a wall…
This is a guest post from Bill Rabenaldt from California about a novel soil nail mitifation technique. Can you nail jell-o to a wall? Not easily. Can you nail a landslide area, levee or bluff before it fails? You bet! The valley floors around Aspen, Telluride and other resort areas in the Rockies are all but built out. Where do business and families go? The surrounding hills and mountain sides …
3 May 2009
An ancient tsunami in New York
The BBC are running a slightly strange story today about the possibility that the News York area was hit by a tsunami about 2,300 years ago. Given that by far the most likely source of a tsunami is a submarine landslide, this is of some interest. The odd part of this is the timing of the story – I cannot quite work out why it has popped up again now. …
14 April 2009
A round-up of some recent landslide events
I thought that it was time to provide a round-up of some landslide events from around the world: 1. A narrow escape in AustraliaThanks to Remke van Dam for bringing this one to my attention. This Australian family had a pretty lucky escape last week when a pair of large rocks struck their car (image from here): 2. A road-blocking rockfall in AlaskaThanks to John Fritz for this one. In …
31 March 2009
Yosemite rockfall – seismic signal
Improvements in the quality of seismic monitoring systems, in addition to increases in the numbers of instruments and better processing techniques have meant that in the last few years it has become increasingly common to detect large rockfall events from their seismic signature. A nice example of this occurred this week. On 28th March a large rockfall occurred from Ahwiyah Point near Half Dome in Yosemite. This is a pretty …
Terrific rockfall resource
The Colorado Geological Survey publishes a terrific quarterly newsletter on “all aspects of geology throughout the state of Colorado. The latest edition, which is available online for free from here, focuses on rockfalls. It is a terrific read, with some very interesting articles on how and why rockfalls happen; how they can be detected; mitigation approaches; and a number of case studies. It is illustrated with some great photos as …
11 March 2009
USGS educational video on landslides in the San Francisco Bay Area
Thanks to the Geology blog In Terra Veritas for highlighting a USGS video on landslides in the San Francisco Bay area. The video is a useful teaching / background resource, especially in terms of the way that it highlights the impacts of landslides on home owners, which is easily forgotten by both students and their teachers. The video compares two different slides; first, the Love Creek Heights landslide in the …
4 February 2009
Virtual field trip – the Marcus landslide in Arizona
The Arizona Geological Survey have created a rather nice virtual field trip and very useful virtual field trip about the Marcus landslide in Arizona. It is available here: http://www.azgs.az.gov/MarcusLandslide_2008.shtml The slide is a 500,000 year old rock slide that has has a length of about 2 km from scarp crown to deposit toe (see Google Earth image below) and a deposit volume of about 5.25 million cubic metres. The elevation …
25 January 2009
Two interesting recent landslides
Two interesting landslides to report in the last few days. 1. Landslide in Iztapalapa, Mexico CityOn Thursday morning a 50 cubic metre landslide in the Itzapalapa, a poor suburb of Mexico City slid onto a house at the toe of the slope, killing two people. Chinagate has published a rather dramatic picture of the site: The interesting thing about this image is the very large (apparently 5 m high) retaining …
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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