4 April 2013
Slump / earthflow at JMU campus, Harrisonburg
Posted by Callan Bentley
Yesterday I drove down I-81, through the heart of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and the campus of James Madison University. On the east side of the road, a big new slump / earthflow caught my eye. On my way back up the same stretch of road today, I pulled over and photographed it:
Panorama 1 (click to enlarge: ~6000 pixels wide):
Panorama 2 (click to enlarge: 10,000 pixels wide):
It’s this slope right here (Google Maps link), by the astronomy and physics buildings.
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.
Looks like somebody got a hollow-stem auger drilling rig out there to grab a few soil samples.
I have been living some years in Iceland. There are many of these flows to be seen in the north of the country, esp. in the Tröllaskagi region not far from Akureyri. Looks very much like this one.
But the geology is of course different, no expert, but I think in Iceland, the flows are mostly due to underlying permafrost.
Looks like in this Wikimedia photo: File:Ridge along the north slope of Öxnadalur.jpg , but also like in yours. I think on this photo (also from Wikimedia) in the middle ground is shown a similar phenomenon like you describe: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ridge_along_the_north_slope_of_%C3%96xnadalur.jpg