{"id":14663,"date":"2015-02-18T08:08:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T08:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=14663"},"modified":"2015-02-18T08:08:31","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T08:08:31","slug":"wilberforce-earthquake-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/02\/18\/wilberforce-earthquake-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Landslides from the 2015 Wilberforce earthquake in New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"
Wilberforce earthquake<\/h5>\n

On 6 January 2015 a Mw=6.0 earthquake<\/a> affected the Upper Wilberforce River catchment in South Island, New Zealand.\u00a0 Although this earthquake was not very large, its shallow depth (5 km) meant that the earthquake had the potential to generate landslides.\u00a0 On 8 and 9 January a team from GNS Science<\/a> undertook a helicopter survey of the affected area to investigate whether landslides had indeed occurred.\u00a0 They have posted a brief report<\/a> on the Landslides Reports<\/a> part of the Geonet website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The team mapped over 2000 individual landslides, the majority of which were situated in the area of greatest shaking:<\/p>\n

\"Wilberforce<\/a>

From Geonet Landslide Report<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This is a naturally active landscape due to the combination of a dynamic climate and active tectonics.\u00a0 However, the earthquake clearly increased the level of landsliding, especially in the area that was affected by shaking of over 92 gals.\u00a0 The largest landslide had a volume that is estimated to have exceeded 140,000 cubic metres.\u00a0 In the report, there are several really good images of landslides triggered by the earthquake, of which I reproduce two here.\u00a0 This is a large and quite complex failure in the upper reaches of the Griffiths Stream:<\/p>\n

\"Wilberforce<\/a>

From Geonet Landslide Report<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting slide in the Wilberforce Earthquake occurred on the western side of the main divide on the Arahura River, which was briefly blocked.\u00a0 The landslide is estimated to have been about 25,000 square metres:<\/p>\n

\"Wilbeforce<\/a>

From Geonet Landslide Report<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I am sure that the GNS Science team will now undertake a more detailed mapping and interpretation exercise for the landslides triggered by the Wilberforce Earthquake, and I shall look forward to seeing the results in due course.\u00a0 When analysed properly each of these events adds to our understanding of the controls on seismically-induced landslides, which require a great deal of further investigation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GNS landslide team have produced a reconnaissance report detailing the landslides triggered by the 2015 Wilberforce earthquake in New Zealand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":14666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,469,837,15,983,959,7],"class_list":["post-14663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-geonet","tag-landslide-dam","tag-landslide-images","tag-landslide-report","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14663","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=14663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}