{"id":37807,"date":"2021-06-03T10:59:47","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T10:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=37807"},"modified":"2021-06-03T10:59:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T10:59:47","slug":"small-slope-failures-in-sheffield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/06\/03\/small-slope-failures-in-sheffield\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all slope failures are large"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not all slope failures are large<\/h4>\n

Inevitably, on this blog I tend to cover larger landslides most of the time.\u00a0 Large landslides have a greater propensity to cause loss and to disrupt, and of course they are also more newsworthy and they are frequently photogenic.\u00a0 However, this gives a very misleading impression of slope failures, the vast majority of which are small.\u00a0 Nonetheless, even these less impressive landslides can have substantial impacts.<\/p>\n

Whilst walking around my home city of Sheffield<\/a> in the current spell of warm, sunny early summer weather, I have spotted a series of smaller but interesting slope failures. I thought it would be interesting to highlight two of them.<\/p>\n

The Sheffield and Tinsley Canal<\/a> is a 6 km long waterway constructed in 1819 to link the city of Sheffield with the navigable parts of the River Don, allowing goods and people to be transported into and out of the city.\u00a0 Its greatest claim to fame is that the it is the location of part of the opening scenes of the film The Full Monty<\/a> (although it looks considerably better than that now!).<\/p>\n

Today the canal is navigable by pleasure craft, and the towpath forms a walking and cycle route.\u00a0 The image below shows a small slope failure that has occurred in a section of the canal:<\/p>\n

\"A

A small canal bank failure on the Sheffield and Tinsley canal<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

As the\u00a0 image shows, about a 15 m section of the canal bank has collapsed.\u00a0 In the foreground a further section is failing.\u00a0 In other sections of the canal, failures are developing but have not collapsed:-<\/p>\n

\"A

A developing canal bank failure on the Sheffield and Tinsley canal.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The stone blocks have moved towards the canal by about 50 cm, and the fill has subsided by about 30 cm.\u00a0 In this case failure, when it occurs, will substantially disrupt the towpath.\u00a0 There are other sections in a similar state.<\/p>\n

None of these slope failures are large or dramatic, but they have the potential to close the towpath.<\/p>\n

The second case lies on my walk to work.\u00a0 Here, at the top of a steep bank, a retaining wall has recently been constructed to create a pathway for pedestrians.\u00a0 It appears that this wall, which is about 50 cm high, has also started to fail and to move downslope.\u00a0 The owners of the site have employed a novel method to provide short term increased stability:<\/p>\n

\"A

A failing retaining wall in Sheffield.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Securing a slope using cargo straps tied to the trees is not an approach that I have seen before.\u00a0 Again, this is small incipient slope failure, but one that is causing disruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not all slope failures are large: examples of small but disruptive landslides in Sheffield<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":37814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[30638,144,21,959,1193,1162],"class_list":["post-37807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-emgland","tag-europe","tag-images","tag-landslide-report","tag-sheffield","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37807","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=37807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}