The article includes the following image, collected by a UAV, of the landslides triggered in this rainstorm:-<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2022\/06\/22_05-Mibei-1.jpg\")
A UAV image of landslides triggered by the June 2019 rainstorm close to Mibei village in Guangdong. Image from Feng et al. (2022)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n .<\/p>\n Interestingly, this cluster of landslides can also be seen on Google Earth.\u00a0 The location of Mibei is, I believe, 24.6479, 115.3053.\u00a0 This is the image of the area:-<\/p>\n A Google Earth image of the 2019 landslides in the vicinity of Mibei village in Guangdong.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n .<\/p>\n These landslides are interesting.\u00a0 For the most part the crown of the landslide is quite high on the slope, in many places reasonably close to the ridge or another break of slope.\u00a0 They have occurred in forested areas. They are shallow and planar, with a long debris trail.\u00a0 The material appears to be deeply weathered soil or regolith – the authors describe this as a residual soil created by long-term weathering of granitic rocks.<\/p>\n Feng et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a> have recorded 327 landslides in the vicinity of Mibei village.\u00a0 They found that the landslides are indeed shallow – typically 1.5 to 3 m in depth, with very few exceeding 5 m.\u00a0 Through an experimental programme, they have shown that the intense rainfall induced saturation in the shallow layers of the soil, influenced by the permeability boundary between the more intact underlying granites and the shallow, weathered regolith.\u00a0 This induced sliding, with a transition to fluidised flow as the soil underwent deformation.<\/p>\n It seems to me that the landslides probably entrained considerable volume of material in the lower portions of the slope (note the long debris trails, often to the foot of the slope), and Feng et al.<\/em> (2022)<\/a> also noted some toppling around the crown of the landslides, suggesting some retrogression too.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the authors note that there appears to have been a lag between the most intense rainfall and the occurrence of most of the landslides, perhaps being attributable to the time taken for seepage forces to develop.<\/p>\n These types of landslide clusters are increasingly common in intense rainfall events, especially on the granitic areas of SE China.\u00a0 Similar events have been recorded in Hong Kong.<\/a>\u00a0 It is important that analyses are undertaken of them in order to reduce future losses, so this study is welcome.\u00a0 In this case, the timely evacuation of the residents was an important success.<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2022\/06\/22_05-Mibei-2-scaled.jpg\")
Reference<\/h4>\n