{"id":38274,"date":"2021-07-23T07:43:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T07:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=38274"},"modified":"2021-07-23T07:43:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T07:43:59","slug":"benbrack-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/07\/23\/benbrack-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Benbrack: another peat landslide in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benbrack: another peat landslide in Ireland<\/h4>\n

Over the last few years I have blogged about peat landslides in Ireland on a number of occasions<\/a>.\u00a0 Peat landslides are particularly interesting as they tend to have a long run out<\/a> and they are extremely environmentally destructive, both in the source area (where the peat can take decades or more to regenerate) and downstream, where the peat can be a terrible pollutant.\u00a0 And of course peat is a key (and often degrading) carbon store; losing more is bad.<\/p>\n

The newspaper The Anglo-Celt<\/a>\u00a0has a story about yet another peat landslide, this time at Benbrack in West Cavan, Republic of Ireland.\u00a0 The location is about 54.152, -7.852.\u00a0 This is the topography from Google Earth:-<\/p>\n

\"The

Google Earth image of the topography of Benbrack in Ireland, the site of a new peat landslide.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The landslide apparently occurred on 4 July 2021 during heavy rainfall.\u00a0 The landslide was photographed by\u00a0 a trekking enthusiast called Kevin Dockery:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The peat landslide at Benbrack in Ireland. Image by Kevin Dockery via The Anglo-Celt<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The landslide is also visible on the Planet Labs<\/a> imagery of the area:-<\/p>\n

\"Planet

Satellite image of the peat landslide at Benbrack in Ireland. Image copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission, captured on 17 July 2021. Note the scale bar.\u00a0 The crown of the landslide is towards the south – it moved towards the northwest.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Based on this image the landslide is about 600 m long.\u00a0 The newspaper article includes a description of the landslide<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…[T]he landslide started on the Benbrack summit plateau at a height of 470 metres above sea level, about 400m south west of Derrynananta.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAbout six feet [2 m] deep of peat slipped away down the mountainside,\u201d explained Kevin of the largest of three landslides in the area – two in Benbrack a smaller one on Cuilcagh.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was as if a big Hi-Mac scooped away all the peat down to the level where there were gravel and stones.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were massive chunks of peat gouged up – they wouldn\u2019t fit into a car trailer they were that big. It just cascaded down the mountainside, it was extraordinary.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This landslide does not appear to be associated with either forestry or wind farm development, as far as I can see.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2021). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benbrack: a large peat landslide in West Cavan in the Republic of Ireland, triggered by heavy rainfall on 4 July 2021 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":38279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7203],"tags":[144,469,303,959,1145,30644,304,1205],"class_list":["post-38274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet-labs","tag-europe","tag-featured","tag-ireland","tag-landslide-report","tag-peat","tag-peat-landslide","tag-peatslide","tag-planet-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38274","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=38274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}