{"id":33662,"date":"2020-04-17T06:38:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T06:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=33662"},"modified":"2020-04-17T06:38:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T06:38:33","slug":"salkantay-planet-labs-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/04\/17\/salkantay-planet-labs-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Salkantay landslide: wonderful Planet Labs high resolution satellite images"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Salkantay landslide: wonderful Planet Labs high-resolution satellite images<\/h4>\n

Back in February I wrote a series of pieces<\/a> reconstructing the events that led to the huge and highly destructive debris flow in the Salkantay region of Peru<\/a>.\u00a0 It is clear that this event was a large landslide from the mountainside that transitioned into the debris flow.\u00a0 My friends at Planet Labs<\/a> have now succeeded in capturing not one but two fantastic high-resolution images of the site of the initial landslide.\u00a0 The first was captured on 11 April 2020 using the SkySat instrument:-<\/p>\n

\"The

A high resolution SkySat satellite image of the the Salkantay landslide by Planet Labs<\/a>. Image captured on 11 April 2020, copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The second was captured on 13 April 2020, also using the SkySat instrument:-<\/p>\n

\"Salkantay

A high resolution SkySat satellite image of the the Salkantay landslide by Planet Labs<\/a>. Image captured on 14 April 2020, copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a closer look at the source of the landslide.\u00a0 An image captured by Benito Moncado of the site shortly after the landslide suggests that the initial failure was a steep wedge high in the rock mass.\u00a0 This is a more detailed view of the landslide scar and the initial downslope deposit:-<\/p>\n

\"SkySat

Detail from the high resolution SkySat satellite image of the the Salkantay landslide by Planet Labs<\/a>. Image captured on 11 April 2020, copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It is worth comparing this image with the pre-failure Google Earth image of the Salkantay site:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

A Google Earth image of the site of the Salkantay landslide<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Comparison of the two images shows a long section of rock slope that has been removed by the landslide.\u00a0 Interestingly, the 11 April image shows a smaller (but not insignificant) fresh landslide scar near to the crown of the landslide, and a debris trail on the snow, suggesting that some instability is still occurring.\u00a0 The main (February) landslide has planed off the topography down the slope, probably indicating sliding on a joint surface.\u00a0 It is worth noting that this slope is much steeper than it might appear on the satellite image (take a look at the photographs of the site in my earlier post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I think that the behaviour of the landslide at the foot of the slope is really interesting too, but that is a matter for a future post.<\/p>\n

Reference and acknowledgement<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2020). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Many thanks to Robert Simmon of Planet Labs<\/a>, and to his colleagues there, for tasking the SkySat instrument and for providing the imagery.\u00a0 Their help and support is hugely appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extraordinary high resolution satellite images of the source and deposit of the Salkantay rock avalanche in Peru, collected by Planet Labs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":33667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7203],"tags":[469,959,158,1205,25,16529,122],"class_list":["post-33662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet-labs","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-peru","tag-planet-labs","tag-satellite","tag-skysat","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33662","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=33662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}