{"id":219,"date":"2010-01-28T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/01\/28\/earthquake-driven-coastal-erosion-or-a-coastal-lateral-spread-in-haiti\/"},"modified":"2010-10-21T13:36:17","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T17:36:17","slug":"earthquake-driven-coastal-erosion-or-a-coastal-lateral-spread-in-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/01\/28\/earthquake-driven-coastal-erosion-or-a-coastal-lateral-spread-in-haiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Earthquake-driven coastal erosion (or a coastal lateral spread) in Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Discovery Channel has news<\/a> of a very interesting example of rapid coastal erosion driven by the earthquake in Haiti. The site is at Petit Paradis to the west of Port-au-Prince. Eye-witness reports suggest that the town was struck by a highly localised tsunami in the earthquake, apparently killing 20. This is interesting in part because it is quite likely such a localised event would have been caused by a (submarine?) landslide – not at all unusual in earthquakes. However, the before and after satellite images show the magnitude of the changes on the coastline in this area. <\/p>\n

Before<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And after<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
At first glance the change does not look so dramatic, but take a look at the location of the coastline in the before image in relation to the white building that I have highlighted below:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Actually, it is a little more interesting than you might initial suppose. First, note that the section of coast that has “disappeared” lies only between the two yellow dots that I have marked on the image above. To the east and the west the beach is intact. Second, take a look at this CNN video:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/i.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/.element\/apps\/cvp\/3.0\/swf\/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed_edition&videoId=world\/2010\/01\/23\/watson.paradise.lost.cnn<\/p>\n

The key aspect is the picture of that lone tree standing upright in the ocean. A USGS report has suggested this is the site of a lateral spread (the same type of landslide that is evident in the port area of Port-au-Prince<\/a>), which has caused the coastline to slip into the sea. As lateral spreads are essentially translational, a tree can remain upright. Unfortunately, as the coastline is now no longer protected by a beach, further erosion is likely. An interesting hypothesis is of course that this not-insubstantial slip caused the localised tsunami – or could it be that there was no wave at all, just the appearance of one to those people standing on the land as it slipped below the waves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Discovery Channel has news of a very interesting example of rapid coastal erosion driven by the earthquake in Haiti. The site is at Petit Paradis to the west of Port-au-Prince. Eye-witness reports suggest that the town was struck by a highly localised tsunami in the earthquake, apparently killing 20. This is interesting in part because it is quite likely such a localised event would have been caused by a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[134,23,68,159,8],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coastal-erosion","tag-earthquake","tag-haiti","tag-lateral-spread","tag-satellite-imagery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","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=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}