{"id":5504,"date":"2012-11-16T10:13:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T10:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=5504"},"modified":"2012-11-16T10:14:54","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T10:14:54","slug":"losses-from-landslides-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/11\/16\/losses-from-landslides-in-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"Losses from landslides in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/11\/08\/rising-trends-in-landslides-in-colombia\/\">Colombia is a country with a serious landslide problem<\/a>.\u00a0 The combination of mountainous terrain,\u00a0 active tectonics, occasional earthquakes, deep weathering and intense rainfall means that the level of hazard is high.\u00a0 Add to this a vulnerable population and rapid expansion of the infrastructure, and the results are inevitably that <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/12\/11\/an-initial-assessment-of-the-bello-landslide-disaster-in-colombia\/\">losses from landslides are high<\/a>.\u00a0 In recent years I seem to have blogged about landslide events in Colombia on numerous occasions (for example <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/06\/18\/48-deaths-resulting-from-a-leaking-pipe\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/12\/10\/a-stunning-new-landslide-video-paz-de-rio-boyaca-colombia\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/04\/15\/two-more-landslides-in-colombia\/\">here<\/a>), and there have been some <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/12\/10\/a-stunning-new-landslide-video-paz-de-rio-boyaca-colombia\/\">spectacular events caught on video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This graph shows the cumulative level of landslide losses in Colombia since the start of 2004, based upon my fatal landslide database (<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/09\/26\/download-a-free-copy-of-my-geology-paper-global-patterns-of-loss-of-life-from-landslides\/\">a paper explaining and analysing the data from the database can be found here<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/11\/16\/losses-from-landslides-in-colombia\/12_11-colombia-fatal-landslides-graph\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5506\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5506\" title=\"12_11 Colombia fatal landslides graph\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2012\/11\/12_11-Colombia-fatal-landslides-graph.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"576\" height=\"387\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2012\/11\/12_11-Colombia-fatal-landslides-graph.jpg 576w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2012\/11\/12_11-Colombia-fatal-landslides-graph-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/a>The seasonal nature of losses from landslides is quite clear, as is the high rate of losses in the period 2007-2011.\u00a0 Note that rainfall patterns in Colombia are heavily affected by the El Ni\u00f1o &#8211; La Nina (ENSO) cycle, with the heaviest precipitation being associated with El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o conditions.\u00a0 Current conditions are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov\/products\/analysis_monitoring\/lanina\/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf\">neutral in terms of ENSO<\/a> at present, but the effects of the recent La Nina conditions are clear in the graph above when the previously steep trend flattened out.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of landslides across Colombia compared with the rest of South America can be seen in the map below, which shows fatal landslides from 2004 to 2011.\u00a0 Each dot is a single landslide that killed one or more people; the background is a digital elevation model. \u00a0 The concentration in Colombia (in the northwest of the map) is clear:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/11\/16\/losses-from-landslides-in-colombia\/12_11-colombia-fatal-landslides-map\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5507\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5507\" title=\"12_11 Colombia fatal landslides map\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2012\/11\/12_11-Colombia-fatal-landslides-map-e1353060453806.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"912\" \/><\/a>If we are to reduce the impact of landslides across South America then Colombia needs to be a priority country.\u00a0 Note also that western Colombia has high levels of seismic hazard &#8211; a large earthquake in this area would probably cause landsliding on a very large scale.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A brief review of the levels of loss of life from landslides in Colombia in recent years.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":5507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[542,1],"tags":[359,45,469],"class_list":["post-5504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-database-2","category-uncategorized","tag-colombia","tag-database","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504","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=5504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}