Regular readers will know that Colin Stark and Goran Ekstrom have developed a technique to use the global seismic network to detect very large landslides<\/a> – this is published in Ekstrom and Stark (2012) and was accompanied by a commentary that I wrote (Petley 2012).\u00a0 In 2012 they detected the Mount Lituya rock avalanche in Alaska (shown in the image below), and I was extremely fortunate to be able to feature it on this blog before anyone in Alaska was aware of it<\/a>.\u00a0 They also used this technique to identify the Seti River landslide in Nepal,<\/a> and various other landslides as well.<\/p>\n The Mount Lituya landslide on 2012. Sunday’s landslide is likely to be even larger! Source: http:\/\/www.nationalparkstraveler.com\/2012\/07\/massive-landslide-coats-glacier-bay-national-parks-johns-hopkins-glacier-chocolate-frosting10200#comment-41027<\/p><\/div>\n Using this technique, Colin and Goran, together with Clement Hibert, have detected a new, very large landslide in the Alaska panhandle.\u00a0 Clearly this post is with their kind agreement and using information that they have supplied.\u00a0 The landslide occurred on 16th February 2014 (i.e. on Sunday) at 14:24 UT (i.e. at 05:24 local time).\u00a0 Using the LFH techniques in Ekstrom and Stark (2013), the approximate parameters of the landslide can be deduced.\u00a0 This suggests that the landslide had the following characteristics:<\/p>\n These parameters should be considered to be preliminary at this stage, but if confirmed using satellite imagery this will be the largest natural landslide since 2010, and the largest landslide anywhere in the world since the Bingham Canyon mine event<\/a>.<\/p>\n For reference, the Lituya Mountain landslide (which so dramatic that it was even featured in the Daily Mail<\/a>!) had a mass of about 20 million tonnes.\u00a0 The seismic data suggests that this landslide may also have run out over ice, so it is likely to be a truly impressive event once it is located.<\/p>\n Update:<\/strong><\/em> this landslide has now been found – it is on the flanks of Mount La Perouse. Details in this blog post.<\/a><\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Ekstrom, G., & Stark, C. (2013). Simple Scaling of Catastrophic Landslide Dynamics. Science<\/em>, 339<\/strong> (6126), 1416-1419 DOI: 10.1126\/science.1232887<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Alaska](\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2014\/02\/14_02-Lituya-1.jpg\")
<\/a>A new, very large landslide in Alaska<\/h5>\n
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