{"id":25551,"date":"2017-09-14T21:20:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=25551"},"modified":"2017-09-19T08:04:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T08:04:34","slug":"seafront-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/09\/14\/seafront-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Landslides from the Kaikoura earthquake part 1: the Seafront landslide (also wrongly known as the Seaward landslide)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Landslides from the Kaikoura earthquake part 1: the Seafront Landslide<\/h4>\n

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be able to fly over the area affected by the Kaikoura earthquake<\/a> by helicopter, together with colleagues from GNS Science<\/a>.\u00a0 Over the next few days I will post some images of the earthquake-induced landslides<\/a> that I took on this flight.\u00a0 I am starting with the very large and very complex Seafront landslide, which is perhaps the most infamous of all the landslides triggered in this earthquake, thanks to images that went viral<\/a> showing three cows trapped on a displaced raft on the landslide.\u00a0 For this reason the slide became known as the Cow Slide, but it is correctly termed the Seafront Landslide (also known, wrongly, as the Seaward Landslide):-<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

Cows trapped on the Seafront Landslide, via The Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The cows were rescued.\u00a0 This is very large, very complex landslide.\u00a0 If you want to locate it on Google Earth it is at -42.178, 173.880.\u00a0 This is a view of the landslide from the north:<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

The Seafront Landslide, triggered by the Kaikoura earthquake, viewed from the north.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Whilst this is the landslide viewed from the south:<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

The Seafront Landslide, triggered by the Kaikoura earthquake, viewed from the south.<\/p><\/div>\n

The images show that this is very wide, broad slump type landslide in which, quite literally, the side of the ridge has detached and slipped.\u00a0 At the toe the slide has broken up considerably, whilst in other sections it has remained remarkably coherent.\u00a0 This image shows the very complex behaviour of this displaced block.\u00a0 Note that some sections of the slide have been modified by the farmer to try to regain productive land:<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

The displaced mass of the Seafront Landslide, triggered by the Kaikoura earthquake.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

One other really interesting observation about this landslide is that the northern edge of the ridge also failed, and that a much larger section partially displaced but did not collapse:<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

The failure at the northern end of the ridge from which the Seafront Landslide originated. Note the large, partially failed section.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Whilst the other (west) side of the ridge appears to be essentially undamaged, even though it is steep:<\/p>\n

\"Seafront

The west side of the ridge from which the Seafront Landslide originated. Note the lack of slope failures.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This illustrates perfectly why it is so hard to forecast the behaviour of slopes in earthquakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helicopter images of the very large Seafront Landslide, also known as the Cow Slide, triggered by the Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":25563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[8537,469,1213,983,7],"class_list":["post-25551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-featured","tag-kaikoura","tag-landslide-images","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25551","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=25551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}