{"id":10506,"date":"2014-07-24T08:21:45","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T08:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=10506"},"modified":"2014-07-24T08:21:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T08:21:45","slug":"askja-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2014\/07\/24\/askja-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Askja: a very large volcanic landslide in Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"
Askja landslide<\/h5>\n

A very large an interesting landslide occurred in Iceland on the night of 22nd\/23rd July in the flanks of the Askja stratovolcano in Iceland.\u00a0 This is a very interesting event in a number of ways, not least because the volume appears to be large – estimates at present range from about 24 million cubic metres to about 60 million cubic metres.<\/p>\n

Images are appearing of the landslide, which is impressive in its scale:<\/p>\n

\"Askja\"<\/a>

Source: http:\/\/www.mbl.is\/frettir\/innlent\/2014\/07\/23\/vigalegur_mokkur_steig_til_himins\/<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The landslide is estimate to be about a kilometre in width.\u00a0 There is a nice video taken from a flight over the landslide on the RUV website<\/a> too. The landslide entered the lake at the foot of the slope, generating very large tsunami type waves.\u00a0 A credible witness, \u00c1rmann H\u00f6skuldsson, who was in the area with a group of students, estimates that the waves were 50 m high<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cause of the landslide is not clear at present. Some of the articles suggest snow\/ice melt, but there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.\u00a0 The slopes on the southern edge of the Askja massif are steep.\u00a0 This Google Earth image of what I think is the site suggests that there may have been previous large-scale landslides on this slope:<\/p>\n

\"Askja\"<\/a><\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

There is also evidence of large amounts of erosion, suggesting that the slope may have been steadily destabilising with time.\u00a0 It is entirely possible that this is a progressive landslide with no trigger event.<\/p>\n

If the waves were 50 m high then the level of erosion around the lake should be extremely high given the weak materials.\u00a0 I have yet to see any good images of the scour around the lake.\u00a0 This must be a golden opportunity to understand better the generation of tsunami waves by rapid, large landslides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week a very large landslide occurred on the flanks of the Askja stratovolcano in Iceland. Initial estimates are that is over 25 million cubic metres. and that it generated tsunami waves in the lake at the toe that were over 50 m high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":10507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[469,109,959,107],"class_list":["post-10506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-featured","tag-iceland","tag-landslide-report","tag-volcano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}