{"id":19038,"date":"2016-06-25T08:59:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T08:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=19038"},"modified":"2016-06-25T08:59:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T08:59:37","slug":"galway-peat-bog-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/06\/25\/galway-peat-bog-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"A peat bog landslide in Galway, Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Galway peat bog landslide<\/h5>\n<p>Various news agencies in Ireland <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/Landslide-Galway-N59-bogland-heavy-rain-Clifden\">are reporting a peat bog landslide<\/a> at\u00a0Clifden in Galway on Thursday night.\u00a0 Reports suggest that 4000 tonnes of material have shifted, blocking the N59 Connemara to Galway city road.\u00a0 Reports suggest that the slope was still moving on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Peat bog landslides are quite unusual (not least because peat bogs are quite rare), and behave in a manner that is also a little different.\u00a0 This is because the main mass of the landslide is saturated organic material that has a low density.\u00a0 This makes them unusually mobile once they are disturbed.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2009\/07\/08\/shallow-landslides-in-county-mayo-ireland\/\">I blogged about a set of peat bog landslides<\/a> in Ireland back in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The best view of this peat bog landslide comes from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PWEEwVECPnw\">Youtube video of drone footage<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19042\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19042\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19042\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/06\/16_06-peat-bog-landslide-1-e1466842916574.jpg\" alt=\"The Galway peat bog landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19042\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Galway peat bog landslide via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PWEEwVECPnw\">Youtube<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Notice the very disturbed area at the crown of the landslide, which is typical of a peat bog landslide.\u00a0 The mobility of the slide is clear as the mass has moved on an unusually low angled slope.<\/p>\n<p>This is the full video of the landslide:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PWEEwVECPnw?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<h5>Details about the Galway peat bog landslide<\/h5>\n<p>The location of the landslide appears to be at 54.4778, -9.8981 (54.4778 N, 9.8981 W).\u00a0 There is good imagery of the site on Google Earth, taken in 2011:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19046\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19046\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19046\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/06\/16_06-peat-bog-landslide-2-e1466843821769.jpg\" alt=\" Galway peat bog landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19046\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google Earth imagery of the Galway peat bog landslide, taken in 2011<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Peat bog landslides are usually associated with heavy rain, as appears to be the case here. Sometimes disturbance of the slope by human activities also plays a key role, but there is nothing to indicate that was the case here. Of course peat bogs take hundreds of years to form, so these events have a long legacy. As peat is also an important store of carbon, it should be actively preserved where possible.\u00a0 Sadly, the rapidly increasing rainfall intensities that are being seen in many places as a result of climate change means that these sorts of events are likely to become more common.<\/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>On Thursday night heavy rainfall triggered a peat bog landslide in Galway in the far west of Ireland, blocking a main road. <!-- 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":19042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,469,303,959,1145,1141,304],"class_list":["post-19038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-europe","tag-featured","tag-ireland","tag-landslide-report","tag-peat","tag-peat-bog","tag-peatslide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038","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=19038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}