{"id":30634,"date":"2019-04-02T06:59:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T06:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=30634"},"modified":"2019-04-02T06:59:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T06:59:21","slug":"tsangpo-gorge-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2019\/04\/02\/tsangpo-gorge-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsangpo gorge: a first analysis of landslides triggered by the 2017 Ms=6.9 Milin earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tsangpo gorge: a first analysis of landslides triggered by the 2017 Ms=6.9 Milin earthquake<\/h4>\n

On 18th November 2017 a shallow Ms=6.9 earthquake struck the Tsangpo Gorge area of Tibet<\/a>. At the time I used satellite imagery from Planet Labs<\/a> to show that the earthquake had triggered large numbers of landslides along the Tsangpo Gorge.\u00a0 Some of these were valley blocking, although fortunately the blockages proved to be short-lived.\u00a0 A paper (Hu et al.<\/em> 2019<\/a>)\u00a0 in the journal Landslides<\/em><\/a> provides an analysis of the landslides triggered by the earthquake, based on mapping from satellite imagery.<\/p>\n

In total, Hu et al.<\/em> (2019)<\/a> mapped 766 coseismic landslides, with a total volume of about 31 million cubic metres.\u00a0 Whilst this number seems small, the authors note that mapping with satellite imagery means that many of the smallest landslides will not be identified.<\/p>\n

The authors have included the image below in the paper showing the landslides triggered by the earthquake.\u00a0 It is clear that there are clustered around the walls of the Tsangpo Gorge:-<\/p>\n

\"Tsangpo

Landslides triggered by the the 2017 Ms=6.9 Milin earthquake in the Tsangpo gorge. Image from Hu et al.<\/em> (2019)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Hu et al.<\/em> (2019)<\/a> note that the landslide distribution was dominated by the presence of the deeply-incised, V-shaped gorge rather than proximity to the fault (which is the case elsewhere<\/a>).\u00a0 Thus, in this case, topography has been the controlling factor in landslide development.<\/p>\n

In total, nine valley-blocking landslides developed in the earthquake, although only three lakes formed within the Tsangpo Gorge.\u00a0 These breached within a few days.<\/p>\n

The authors highlight the increased likelihood of debris flows in this area in the aftermath of the eaethquake, in common with effects seen elsewhere.\u00a0 Interestingly, they also highlight increased risk of glacial debris flow events in the area.\u00a0 On 17th October 2018 such an event occurred downstream from the earthquake-affected area at Sedongpu<\/a>.\u00a0 This event, which blocked the Tsangpo to a depth of 80 metres, had a volume of about 33 million cubic metres according to Hu et al.<\/em> (2019)<\/a>. Ten days later a further glacial debris flow occurred at the same site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Hu, K., Zhang, X., You, Y. et al. 2019.\u00a0 Landslides and dammed lakes triggered by the 2017 Ms6.9 Milin earthquake in the Tsangpo gorge<\/a>. Landslides<\/em>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10346-019-01168-w<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A study has been published of landslides triggered by the 18th November 2017 Ms=6.9 earthquake in the Tsangpo Gorge area of Tibet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":30636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[16,23,469,15,113,688],"class_list":["post-30634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-china","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-landslide-dam","tag-tibet","tag-valley-blocking-landslide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30634","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=30634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}