{"id":32609,"date":"2019-12-03T07:25:23","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T07:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=32609"},"modified":"2019-12-03T07:26:08","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T07:26:08","slug":"kumtor-mine-new-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2019\/12\/03\/kumtor-mine-new-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet Labs images of the huge new landslide at Kumtor Mine in Kyrgyzstan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Planet Labs images of the huge new landslide at Kumtor Mine in Kyrgyzstan<\/h4>\n

On 1 December 2019 a very large mining-related landslide<\/a> occurred in a waste pile at the Kumtor Mine in Kyrgyzstan<\/a>.\u00a0 Concerns have been raised previously<\/a> about the large landslides occurring at this site, and indeed I wrote a blog post in September about these risks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new landslide at Kumtor occurred at 5:43 am on 1 December<\/a>.\u00a0 Sadly, two workers appear to have been killed, although search parties have yet to find them.\u00a0 Early reports suggest that the landslide was about 12 million cubic metres, although this remains uncertain.<\/p>\n

Planet Labs<\/a> have captured high quality before and after images of the site, which is located at 41.90, 78.18.\u00a0 This is the site on 29 November, prior to the failure:-<\/p>\n

\"Kumtor

Planet Labs<\/a> image of the site of the Kumtor mine landslide of 1 December 2019. Planet Labs<\/a> PlanetScope image, collected 29 November 2019. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the landslide is captured on an image from 1 December 2019, just a few hours after the failure:-<\/p>\n

\"Kumtor

Planet Labs<\/a> image of the aftermath of the Kumtor mine landslide of 1 December 2019. Planet Labs<\/a> PlanetScope image, collected 1 December 2019. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The images show that the landslide was very large – the length appears to be about 2 km and the width is about 500 m, possibly more in the lower parts.\u00a0 The failure appears to have started in recently tipped materials close to the bottom of the images.\u00a0 The 29 November 2019 satellite image shows vehicles in this area.\u00a0 The rear scarp of the landslide is in partial shadow, but can be seen in the image of 1 December.<\/p>\n

A hint of what might have happened at Kumtor Mine is shown in this sequence of Planet Labs<\/a> images from the last few weeks, taken on 8, 20 and 29 November 2019:-<\/p>\n

\"Kumtor

A sequence of Planet Labs<\/a> images of the upper parts of the Kumtor mine landslide of 1 December 2019, prior to failure. Collection dates as per image. Planet Labs<\/a> PlanetScope images, collected November 2019. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The images appear to show a new area of active tipping in early November, which expanded rapidly through the month.\u00a0 The image of 29 November appears to show the development of a large failure in the area that developed into the full landslide ultimately.\u00a0 The debris appears to be loading the next bench down.<\/p>\n

It is not possible to say whether this is the start of the events that ended so tragically on 1 December, but I strongly suspect that this is the case.\u00a0 If so, I wonder if this was detected at the time, and how the risk was being managed?<\/p>\n

Reference<\/p>\n

Planet Team (2019). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planet Labs have captured before and after images of the huge new landslide at Kumtor Mine in Kyrgyzstan, which give an indication as to what went wrong <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":32614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27393],"tags":[469,337,959,299,205,28193],"class_list":["post-32609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mining","tag-featured","tag-kyrgyzstan","tag-landslide-report","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-western-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32609","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=32609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}