{"id":20474,"date":"2016-11-17T08:48:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T08:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=20474"},"modified":"2016-11-17T08:48:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T08:48:47","slug":"hapuku-river-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/11\/17\/hapuku-river-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Hapuku River: a major landslide dam after the earthquake in New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hapuku River: a major landslide dam after the earthquake in New Zealand<\/h5>\n

With each passing day the impact of the Kaikoura earthquake<\/a> becomes more clear.\u00a0 Whilst human losses in this sparsely populated area were low, the major legacy appears to be the landslides, of which there are very many. \u00a0 Resources are becoming available that provide detail, I would highlight the following as being particularly interesting:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Canterbury Maps have put online a GIS map<\/a> that provides details of their reconnaissance flights, and a large set of georeferenced photographs of the impacts, mostly landslides.<\/li>\n
  2. The ESA has placed online a Sentinel satellite image<\/a> that, though cloudy, allows many of the landslides to be seen.\u00a0 The implication from this image is that landsliding is very extensive.<\/li>\n
  3. The Research Group on Engineering Geology in Greece<\/a> has posted a provisional landslide map<\/a>, again using the Sentinel image.\u00a0 This is not complete because of the cloud cover, but it starts to give an indication of what an extraordinary event this has been in landslide terms.\u00a0 I think we can now safely say that this is the largest landslide events since the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"Hapuku

    Preliminary Map of Co-Seismic Landslides for the M 7.8 Kaikoura, New Zealand Earthquake, prepared by the Research Group on Earthquake Geology in Greece<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    The landslide dam on the Hapuku River<\/h5>\n

    At the moment the site that is causing the greatest concern is a landslide dam on the Hapuku River, which has completely blocked the flow and is about 150 m high.\u00a0 This landslide was witnessed and photographed<\/a> by a local resident, Neil Protheroe.\u00a0 The Civil Defence has been circulating this photograph of the dam, and has advised those living downstream to relocate.<\/p>\n

    \"Hapuku

    The landslide dam on the Hapuku River as posted by Civil Defence<\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    There is a set of images on the Canterbury Government web server that I highlighted above, of which these are two:<\/p>\n

    \"Hapuku

    The landslide dam on the Hapuku River, image from Canterbury Maps<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    \"Hapuku

    The landslide dam on the Hapuku River, image from Canterbury Maps<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    The dam appears to be tall, narrow and, at least on the surface, comparatively fine grained.\u00a0 The concern about the threats posed by this river blockage are not misplaced. More detailed analysis is urgently required, and will undoubtedly be underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A very large valley blocking landslide has occurred on the Hapuku River in New Zealand following the Kaikoura earthquake, creating a 150 m high dam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":20481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[23,469,1213,15,7,688],"class_list":["post-20474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-kaikoura","tag-landslide-dam","tag-new-zealand","tag-valley-blocking-landslide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474","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=20474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}