{"id":25518,"date":"2017-09-11T01:49:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T01:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=25518"},"modified":"2017-09-11T01:49:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T01:49:25","slug":"dimye-earthflow-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/09\/11\/dimye-earthflow-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A dramatic earthflow video from Dimye village in Tibet"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>A dramatic earthflow video from Dimye village in Tibet<\/h4>\n<p>A video has been <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Lhatseri\/status\/906175294649753600\">circulating this weekend on Twitter<\/a> showing a dramatic earthflow from Dimye in Tibet.\u00a0 This apparently originated from Wechat &amp; Weibo in China, although very little information is available about it.\u00a0 This is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=i-R9oAV9tSA\">Youtube version<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i-R9oAV9tSA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The accompanying text for the video associated it with melting permafrost.\u00a0 On Twitter, Mika McKinnon (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikamckinnon\">@mikamckinnnon<\/a>) has undertaken a huge amount of background work on this event, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikamckinnon\/status\/906386026247069696\">has identified the location<\/a> as Dimye village, Zatoe (Zaduo in Chinese) township, Tridu county, Yushu prefecture, Qinghai Province.\u00a0 The landslide occurred on 7th September 2017.\u00a0 She also found an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/serkyiphonga\/posts\/841333172692667\">additional video of the landslide on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst the posting links this event to permafrost degradation, this is not clear to me.\u00a0 This image, from the second video, shows the materials involved in the landslide:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25521\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/06\/25\/galway-peat-bog-landslide\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25521\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25521\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/09\/17_08-Tibet-1-e1505092066895.jpg\" alt=\"Dimye earthflow\" width=\"640\" height=\"356\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-25521\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A still from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/serkyiphonga\/posts\/841333172692667\">Facebook video<\/a> showing the earthflow at Dimye in Tibet.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The video does not showing any obvious frozen soil or ice blocks.\u00a0 To me this is quite reminiscent of the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/06\/25\/galway-peat-bog-landslide\/\">landslides that we see in peat in the uplands of Europe<\/a>.\u00a0 My fellow blogger Callan Bentley featured <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/mountainbeltway\/2016\/09\/10\/peat-slide\/\">a nice example on his blog exactly a year ago<\/a>.\u00a0 The soils involved in the Dimye village landslide are extremely dark in colour, which suggests that they are rich in organic matter.\u00a0 I note that in a recent (open access) paper, <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ehs2.1263\/full\">Yang <em>et al.<\/em> (2017)<\/a> describe peat areas in the Qinghai-Tibetan area, noting that there is significant environmental degradation occurring in these places, causing rapid peat loss.<\/p>\n<p>It is not possible to say whether this is indeed a peat landslide, or something similar in an organic soil, or a permafrost slide.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I doubt that more information will become available in the near future.\u00a0 But it is a great video.<\/p>\n<h4>Reference<\/h4>\n<p><cite id=\"ehs21263-cit-1001\"><span class=\"author\">Yang, G.<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">C. Peng<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">H. Chen<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">F. Dong<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">W. Ning<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">Y. Yang<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">Y. Zhang<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">D. Zhu<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">Y. He<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">S. Shi<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">X. Zeng<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">T. Xi<\/span>, <span class=\"author\">Q. Meng<\/span>, and <span class=\"author\">Q. Zhu<\/span>. <span class=\"pubYear\">2017<\/span>. <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ehs2.1263\/full\"><span class=\"articleTitle\">Qinghai\u2013Tibetan Plateau peatland sustainable utilization under anthropogenic disturbances and climate change<\/span>. <span class=\"journalTitle\">Ecosystem Health and Sustainability<\/span><\/a> <span class=\"vol\">3 <\/span>(<span class=\"citedIssue\">3<\/span>):e01263. doi: <a class=\"accessionId\" title=\"Link to external resource: 10.1002\/ehs2.1263\" href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ehs2.1263\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">10.1002\/ehs2.1263<\/a><\/cite><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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 interesting earthflow was caught on video last week at Dimye in Tibet. It is currently unclear as to whether this was associated with permafrost loss<!-- 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":25521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[16,534,881,469,963,1145,113,35],"class_list":["post-25518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-video","tag-china","tag-earthflow","tag-east-asia","tag-featured","tag-landslide-video","tag-peat","tag-tibet","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25518","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=25518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}