{"id":6425,"date":"2013-05-17T09:05:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T09:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=6425"},"modified":"2013-05-17T09:06:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T09:06:59","slug":"was-the-bingham-canyon-landslide-the-largest-ever-non-volcanic-landslide-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/05\/17\/was-the-bingham-canyon-landslide-the-largest-ever-non-volcanic-landslide-in-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the Bingham Canyon landslide the largest historic non-volcanic landslip in North America?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kennecott Utah, used with permission<\/p><\/div>\n

Various media agencies<\/a> are reporting a story about the Bingham Canyon landslide<\/a> of a few weeks ago, suggesting that this might be the largest landslide in North America in historic times.\u00a0 This has been prompted by some work by Jeff Moore of the University of Utah<\/a>, who has compared the landslide with other events in North America.\u00a0 Jeff kindly emailed me about the analysis.\u00a0 First, to set the record straight, his analysis is that Bingham Canyon is the largest historic<\/span>, non-volcanic<\/span> landslide in North American history.\u00a0 This is an important qualifier as the 1980 Mount St Helens<\/a> eruption started with a flank collapse that had a volume of about 2.9 to 3.7 billion cubic metres, and so was much larger<\/p>\n

Jeff’s calculation for Bingham Canyon looks like this: the estimated mass is 165 million tons, which corresponds to about 55 million cubic metres of source volume and 65-70 million cubic metres of deposit (allowing for bulking of the mass during movement).\u00a0 In comparison, these are the largest recorded non-volcanic landslides in North America according to Jeff’s review:<\/p>\n