{"id":13473,"date":"2014-12-04T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T06:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=13473"},"modified":"2014-12-04T00:18:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T00:18:02","slug":"domkar-monastery-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2014\/12\/04\/domkar-monastery-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Domkar Monastery landslide: the (non-)evolution of a failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Domkar Monastery<\/h5>\n<p>Yesterday<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2014\/12\/03\/domkar-monastery-landslide-1\/\"> I highlighted the very large Domkar Monastery landslide in Tibet<\/a>, which failed in a somewhat spectacular manner last month.\u00a0 I have managed to track down a good image of the slope that failed, from the <a href=\"http:\/\/tibetantrekking.com\/amdo-travel\/\">Tibetan Trekking website<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13475\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-51-e1417648571142.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13475\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13475\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-51-e1417648571142.jpg\" alt=\"Domkar Monastery\" width=\"640\" height=\"388\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13475\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/tibetantrekking.com\/amdo-travel\/\">Tibetan Trekking<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>It is not clear to me whether this mass is loess or an old landslide body &#8211; I am still tending towards the former, but it could be the latter.\u00a0 The failed body has deeply incised drainage lines on each side, but little sign of erosion or excavation at the toe.<\/p>\n<p>It is quite interesting to look at the Google Earth archive imagery of the site, taken from a perspective view. This is November 2007:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13478\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-9-e1417649489513.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13478\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13478\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-9-e1417649489513.jpg\" alt=\"Domkar Monastery\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13478\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">November 2007 from Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This is May 2009 (in black and white):<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13479\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-8-e1417649652445.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13479\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13479\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-8-e1417649652445.jpg\" alt=\"Domkar Monastery\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13479\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">May 2009 from Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is November 2010, which post-dates the April 2010 Yushu earthquake that affected this area and damaged the monastery:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13477\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-7-e1417649165673.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13477\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13477\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/12\/14_12-Domkar-7-e1417649165673.jpg\" alt=\"Domkar Monastery\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13477\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">November 2010 from Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The most obvious change is the development of works beside the road in the bottom right hand corner of the image &#8211; I wonder what this is?\u00a0 But the remarkable thing is that there is really no sign in these three images of the development of the landslide except perhaps that the rear scarp formed along the line of the track at the rear of the settlement.\u00a0 Even after the 2010 earthquake the landslide does not seem to have progressed, although it would be interesting to see an image from earlier this year.\u00a0 But from these images there is little sign that an incipient collapse was developing.\u00a0 I suspect that this supports the notion that this is a loess failure &#8211; loess can be a collapsible material, which means that it can be subject to rather spectacular landslides.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An archive of images of the Domkar Monastery landslide is available since 2007.  They show remarkably little evidence of the development of the landslide. <!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":13475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[469,959,697,113],"class_list":["post-13473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-rotational-failure","tag-tibet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13473","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=13473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}