{"id":30862,"date":"2019-04-30T06:11:30","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T06:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=30862"},"modified":"2019-04-30T06:11:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T06:11:30","slug":"bashkara-glacier-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2019\/04\/30\/bashkara-glacier-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Bashkara Glacier: a major rock avalanche in the Caucasus last week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bashkara Glacier: a major rock avalanche in the Caucasus last week<\/h4>\n

Three days ago, \u041c\u0438\u0445\u0430\u0438\u043b \u0414\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043a\u0438\u043d<\/a>, a geohazard researcher on the\u00a0 Caucasus mountains at the High Mountain Geophysical Institute<\/a> in Nalchik, Russia tweeted an image from the Bashkara Glacier in Russia<\/a>. The Bashkara Glacier is suffering significant retreat<\/a>, at rates of up to 8 m per year according to my fellow AGU Blogger, Mauri Pelto<\/a>.\u00a0 This is ascribed in large part to higher summer temperatures.\u00a0 The tweet<\/a> by \u041c\u0438\u0445\u0430\u0438\u043b \u0414\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043a\u0438\u043d<\/a> uses ESA Sentinel imagery to show the deposit from a large rock avalanche in the upper reaches of the Bashkara Glacier.\u00a0 The location is 43.188, 42.741 if you want to take a look.\u00a0 This is the Sentinel image<\/a>:-<\/p>\n

\"Bashkara

Sentinel imagery showing the major rock avalanche on the Bashkara Glacier. Image collected by ESA Sentinel on 25th April 2019, obtained via Sentinel Hub<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This landslide deposit is not visible on the image from two days previously:-<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sentinel imagery showing the site of the major rock avalanche on the Bashkara Glacier. Image collected by ESA Sentinel on 23rd April 2019, obtained via Sentinel Hub<\/a>..<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

At this point there is no further information as to the timing of the landslide, although it should have registered a signal on the local seismic network.\u00a0 The landslide appears to be about 2.7 km from source to toe, and to have generated a deposit that is about 550 metres wide at its maximum.\u00a0 The source appears to be the collapse of the steep rock wall at the head of the glacier, and there is just a hint of some debris and dust in this area in the image of 23rd April, suggesting that the collapse may have had some precursory activity. In terms of mechanism, this landslide appears to be similar to the 2013 Mount Haast collapse, which was captured on the famous video<\/a>.\u00a0 The Mount Haast event had a runout distance of 2.9 km<\/a>, so broadly similar to this event.\u00a0 The deposit volume for that event was 2 million m\u00b3.<\/p>\n

The Bashkara Glacier event has generated a significant amount of dust in addition to the main landslide deposit, which also suggests a rock avalanche.\u00a0 Unfortunately of course the deposit will be rapidly covered by new snowfall, rendering the landslide difficult to study in detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Satellite imagery shows that a major rock avalanche, with a runout length of about 2.7 km, occurred on the Bashkara Glacier in the Caucasus last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":30864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[792,469,306,546,23444],"class_list":["post-30862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-central-asia","tag-featured","tag-rock-avalanche","tag-russia","tag-satallite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30862","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=30862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}