{"id":25892,"date":"2017-10-06T06:49:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T06:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=25892"},"modified":"2017-10-06T06:51:53","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T06:51:53","slug":"murchison-glacier-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/10\/06\/murchison-glacier-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Murchison Glacier: more information about the slowly developing rockslope failure that is affecting the hut"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Murchison Glacier: more information about the ongoing rockslope failure that is affecting the hut<\/h4>\n<p>Earlier this week<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/10\/03\/murchison-hut-1\/\"> I posted about the reasoning behind the closure of Murchison Hut<\/a>, the climbing and skiing refuge located above the Murchison Glacier in Aoraki\/Mount Cook National Park in the South Island of New Zealand.\u00a0 To recap, analysis of aerial imagery and satellite images by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/surveying\/staff\/otago027774.html\">Dr Pascal Sirguey at the University of Otago<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gns.cri.nz\/who\/staff\/1930.html\">Dr Simon Cox from GNS Science<\/a> has indicated that the location of the hut has shifted 9 m laterally and 9 m vertically since November 2008, indicating that there is a large-scale rockslope failure occurring beneath the hut.\u00a0 Clearly there is the potential for a major failure event onto Murchison Glacier at some point (without further monitoring this is essentially impossible to predict), such that the hut has had to be closed.<\/p>\n<p>Pascal has very kindly provided some additional images to illustrate the problem, and I post them here with his permission.\u00a0 First, this is a Pleiades high resilution satellite image draped onto a digital terrain model, that shows the location of the hut, the morphology of the slope, and the tension cracks that extend into the snow pack.\u00a0 The scale of the rockslope failure that is developing is clear:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25906\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25906\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25906\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/10\/17_10-Murchison-3-e1507271582715.jpg\" alt=\"Murchison Glacier\" width=\"640\" height=\"392\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-25906\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pleaides image showing the rockslope failure developing above the Murchison Glacier in New Zealand. Image credit: University of Otago\/GNS\/Pleiades Glacier Observatory\/PLEIADES \u00a9 CNES, 2017, distribution Airbus DS.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This image shows the tension cracks that have developed in the snow pack, and the change in location of the Murchison Hut as the rockslope undergoes creep:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25901\" style=\"width: 561px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25901\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25901\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/10\/17_10-Murchison-4.jpg\" alt=\"Murchison Glacier\" width=\"551\" height=\"633\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/10\/17_10-Murchison-4.jpg 551w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/10\/17_10-Murchison-4-261x300.jpg 261w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 551px) 100vw, 551px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-25901\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tension cracks and the changed position of the Murchison Hut. Image credit: University of Otago\/GNS\/Pleiades Glacier Observatory\/PLEIADES \u00a9 CNES, 2017, distribution Airbus DS.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, Pascal has also produced a surface elevation difference model between 2008 and 2017:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25897\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25897\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25897\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/10\/17_10-Murchison-5-e1507271925479.jpg\" alt=\"Murchison Glacier\" width=\"640\" height=\"391\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-25897\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surface elevation change for the rockslope above Murchison Glacier. Image credit: University of Otago\/GNS\/Pleiades Glacier Observatory\/PLEIADES \u00a9 CNES, 2017, distribution Airbus DS.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This appears to be a site in which<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2352938516300635\"> INSAR could very usefully provide insight into the patterns of movement<\/a>, and any <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/04\/28\/preonzo-rockslide\/\">change in rates of creep<\/a>.\u00a0 Anticipating what will happen next is very hard without this level of analysis; the slope could collapse today or it might still be standing in two decades.<\/p>\n<h4>Acknowledgement<\/h4>\n<p>Thanks to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/surveying\/staff\/otago027774.html\">Pascal Sirguey at the University of Otago<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gns.cri.nz\/who\/staff\/1930.html\">Simon Cox from GNS Science<\/a> for their help in putting this post together.<\/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>Pascal Sirguey has very kindly provided additional images to show the rockslope failure that is developing above Murchison Glacier in New Zealand<!-- 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":25897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[406,469,959,7,310],"class_list":["post-25892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-images","tag-creep","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-new-zealand","tag-rockslope-failure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25892","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=25892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}