{"id":39986,"date":"2022-01-18T08:11:45","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T08:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=39986"},"modified":"2022-01-18T08:11:45","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T08:11:45","slug":"arhavi-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2022\/01\/18\/arhavi-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Arhavi, Turkey: the appalling landslide impacts of new roads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arhavi, Turkey: the appalling landslide impacts of new roads<\/h4>\n

Over the last two decades the appalling impact of poor quality road construction on landslides<\/a> in upland areas has become increasingly clear.\u00a0 I have written about this issue in Nepal<\/a> and India<\/a>, but it is a global issue.<\/p>\n

A really interesting open access<\/strong> paper has just been published in the journal Natural Hazards<\/em><\/a> (Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> 2022<\/a>) that highlights this issue in relation to a road constructed as part of the development of a hydroelectric scheme in Arhavi, Turkey.\u00a0 The paper comes to this stunning conclusion:-<\/p>\n

“Our findings show that the damage generated by the road construction in terms of sediment loads to river channels is compatible with the possible effect of a theoretical earthquake with a magnitude greater than Mw<\/sub>\u2009=\u20096.0.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The location of the study is in the area of 41.195, 41.364, from which the Google Earth image below is taken:<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth image showing road related landslides in the Arhavi area of Turkey.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

In this area a number of road projects have been undertaken since 2016, with the most notable providing the access routes to an under construction hydroelectric scheme.\u00a0 Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a> have mapped the generation of landslides using imagery and ground truthing from 2010 to 2020.\u00a0 In the paper they provide some images of the impact of road-related landslides:-<\/p>\n

\"Examples

Examples of road related landslides, and their impacts, in the Arhavi area of Turkey. Image from Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

As the images above show, the construction of these roads has had a shocking impact on the slopes in an area of ecological importance.\u00a0 The released debris has migrated into the river channels, dramatically changing the sediment loads.\u00a0 In total Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a> have mapped 557 landslides along 267.2 km of roads, 33.9% of which have been constructed over the last 11 years.\u00a0 The authors include this fascinating graph, which shows the increase in road length and the increase in road related and non-road related landslide area over the study period:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The occurrence of new landslides in the Arhavi area of Turkey as a result of road construction. From Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The authors note the change in landslide area responds to periods of heavy rainfall – in other words, the roads establish the instability and rainfall then triggers the landslides.<\/p>\n

Tanya\u015f et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a> draw a very interesting comparison between their findings and the landslides associated with the 2013 M<\/i>s<\/i><\/sub>\u2009=\u20096.6 Minxian earthquake in China<\/a>, which occurred in broadly similar terrain over a broadly similar area.\u00a0 They conclude that the landslide impacts of the earthquake and the road construction in terms of sediment supply into the river system are of a similar scale, although clearly operating in a different timescale.<\/p>\n

The sad element of this is that these landslides almost entirely avoidable – such road related landslide impacts are down to poor engineering practice.\u00a0 Roads do not need to be built in this way, and there are plenty of examples of good practice from around the world.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Tanya\u015f, H., G\u00f6r\u00fcm, T., Kirschbaum, D. et al.<\/i> 2022. Could road constructions be more hazardous than an earthquake in terms of mass movement?<\/a>\u00a0Natural Hazards<\/i>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11069-021-05199-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arhavi, Turkey: a new paper in the Journal Natural Hazards (Tanya\u015f et al. 2022) shows that landslide impacts of new roads can be comparable to that of a medium sized earthquake<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[519,469,17,788,27,690,227],"class_list":["post-39986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review-of-a-paper","tag-asia","tag-featured","tag-research","tag-review-of-a-paper-2","tag-road","tag-road-construction","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39986","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=39986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}