A round up of intersting events and documents in the world of landslides and slopes

1. Please vote for a slope monitoring project
One of the recurrent themes of the IAEH Congress is the growing importance of slope monitoring techniques to provide warning of the development of failure.  One of the most exciting projects is the ALARMS project, led by Prof. Neil Dixon at Loughborough University, which is developing techniques that use acoustic emissions to monitor slope movements.  The project has been entered into an Enterprise competition at Loughborough University, which will be decided by a free vote.  So, please can you visit this page: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/business/enterprise-awards/ and vote for the Alarms project.  It would be a very worthy winner of the prize.


2. Manual on Engineering Geological Practice in Hong Kong
On behalf of the Hong Kong Geotechnical Engineering Office, AECOM have produced a new manual on engineering geological practice in Hong Kong.  Unsurprisingly, it has a strong slopes and landslide component, and it is relevant in areas outside of Hong Kong itself.  This can be downloaded as a pdf for free here.  I recommend it - I think that it will become a very useful guide and reference text.

3. 11th Symposium on Landslides (ISL)
The big four yearly slopes event is the ISL, which was last held in Xian, China.  The next event is in June 2012, and will be held in Banff, Alberta Canada.  This should be a fantastic event in a wonderful location.  The meeting now has a website, and the call for abstracts has been released, with submissions due by 15th April 2011.  Get writing!

4. Slope Stability 2011
In September 2011, Canada will also host a conference on rock slope stability, with a strong emphasis on the mining industry.  This event, which will be held in Vancouver, will be a great opportunity for academics and practitioners to interact.  The site has a website, and again a call for abstracts is out, with a deadline of 7th January 2011.

IAEG presentation and paper on Attabad

Today I presented an invited paper at the 11th Congress of the IAEG in Auckland, New Zealand on the topic of landslide hazards along the Himalayan Arc.  This paper starts by looking at global and regional landslide hazard before presenting the state of play at Attabad.  As usual, I have uploaded the PowerPoint file to Authorstream, such that you should be able to both view and download it below:

10_09 IAEG petley v2

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The written paper has been published in the conference proceedings.  I do not have a pdf of the actual printed version but I do have one of the final manuscript.  I am working on putting that online, so watch this space.

A pdf of the paper itself is available here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/w34v38zb4uvzcj4/10_06%20Petley%20invited%20final.pdf

Note that this paper contains a map of global landslide losses in terms of fatalities and some data both for global losses and for those in the Himalaya. 

Note that the typeset format is slightly different from that of the actual published paper, but the content is the same.  The reference to the paper is:
Petley, D.N., Rosser, N.J., Karim, D., Wali, S., Ali, N., Nasab, N. and Shaban, K. 2010. Non-seismic landslide hazards along the Himlayan Arc.  In: Williams, A.L., Pinches, G.M., Chin, C.Y., McMorran, T.J. and Massey, C.I. (eds) Geologically Active.  CRC Press, London, pp. 143-154.

Landslides at the AGU Fall meeting

Like 16,000 other Earth and environmental scientists, I am heading off next week to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which is held in San Francisco. I have attended several times before - it is an amazing meeting - but this year there is added spice provided by the new Natural Hazards grouping, which means that there is far more of interest for me. The landslide specific session is entitled "Landslide Prediction and Assessment: Mechanisms and Controls on Size Distribution", wich consists of two oral sessions and a large poster session, all on Thursday 17th December. The oral sessions have a great line-up, including:

• A General Landslide Distribution for Triggered Event Landslide Inventories from 100-10,000 Landslides (Invited). B. D. Malamud; F. Guzzetti; D. L. Turcotte
• Landslide scaling and magnitude-frequency distribution (Invited). C. P. Stark; F. Guzzetti
  Material Matters in Landslide Volume-Area Scaling . I. J. Larsen; D. R. Montgomery; O. Korup
  
• Erosion effects on the size and mobility of granular avalanches and landslides. A. Mangeney; O. Roche; O. Hungr; N. Mangold; A. Lucas
  
• Acoustic Emissions During Progressive Failure of Earth Materials – Can we “Hear” The Onset of a Landslide?. G. K. Michlmayr; D. O. Cohen;
• A framework for spatial and temporal prediction of shallow landslides induced by rainfall (Invited). J. W. Godt; N. Lu; B. Sener-Kaya; R. L. Baum
  
• The early warning system of landslides and sediment runoffs using meteorological condition including rainfall-soil moisture index (Invited). T. Kubota; I. C. Silva; H. Hasnawir
• New techniques for landslide hazard assessments: opportunities, methodology, and uncertainty. D. B. Kirschbaum; C. D. Peters-Lidard; R. F. Adler; Y. Hong
• Prediction of Rainfall-Induced Landslides . F. Nadim; F. Sandersen
  

That is quite a line-up!

I am giving three papers at the meeting. These are:

Session Title: EP33C. Coastal Geomorphology and Morphodynamics III
Location: 2004 (Moscone West)
Start time: Wed, Dec 16 - 1:40 PM
EP33C-01. Energy Delivery to Cliffs from Waves, Tides and Storms. E. C. Norman; N. J. Rosser; M. Lim; D. N. Petley

Another paper in the same session will be delivered by a researcher from my team, Mike Lim:

EP33C-03. A quantitative analysis of rock cliff erosion environments. M. Lim; N. Rosser; D. N. Petley; E. C. Norman; J. Barlow

Session Title: H21J. Rocks, Fractures, Fluids, and Life: Insights From Subsurface Observatories I
Location: 3005 (Moscone West)
Start time: Tue, Dec 15 - 8:00 AM
H21J-01. On the development of an underground geoscience laboratory at Boulby in NE England (Invited). D. N. Petley; N. Rosser; J. Barlow; M. J. Brain; M. Lim; M. Sapsford; D. Pybus View Pres.

Session Title: NH52A. Extreme Natural Hazards: Risk Assessment, Forecasting, and Decision Support III
Location: 2006 (Moscone West)
Start time: Fri, Dec 18 - 10:20 AM
NH52A-04. Quantifying the impacts of landslides on society. D. N. Petley; N. Rosser; R. Parker View Pres.

And I am involved in a series of posters too:

Session Title: EP43A. Coastal Geomorphology and Morphodynamics IV Posters
Location: Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Start time: Thu, Dec 17 - 1:40 PM
EP43A-0635. GEOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE NEGATIVE POWER LAW SCALING OF ROCKFALLS, YORKSHIRE, UK.. J. Barlow; N. Rosser; D. N. Petley View Pres.

Session Title: H23E. Rocks, Fractures, Fluids, and Life: Insights From Subsurface Observatories II Posters
Location: Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Start time: Tue, Dec 15 - 1:40 PM
H23E-0997. The Boulby Geoscience Project Underground Research Laboratory: Initial Results of a Rock Mechanics Laboratory Testing Programme. M. J. Brain; D. N. Petley; N. Rosser; M. Lim; M. Sapsford; J. Barlow; E. Norman; A. Williams; D. Pybus View Pres.

Session Title: NH43C. Remote Sensing of Natural Hazards III Posters
Location: Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Start time: Thu, Dec 17 - 1:40 PM
NH43C-1350. Controls on the spatial distribution of landslide hazards triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, Sichuan Province, China . R. N. Parker; N. J. Rosser; D. N. Petley; A. L. Densmore View Pres.

See you there I hope!

Dave

Forthcoming conference in Rapid Mass Movements

CCES in Switzerland will host a conference entitled:

"Triggering of Rapid Mass Movements in Steep Terrain (Mechanisms and Risks)"

The meeting is to be held from 11th to 16th April 2010 at Monte Verità in Switzerland.

Details are available here:
http://www.cces.ethz.ch/projects/hazri/tramm/conference

Tailings dam failures and the price of commodities

A couple of weeks ago the University of Alberta hosted a conference entitled "Tailings and Mine Waste 2009". Impressively, all of the presentations from the meeting have been posted online on an FTP site here. Most of the presentations focus upon technical aspects of tailings facility design, but there is a very interesting talk from Michael Davis and Todd Martin from AMEC online as a pdf here. This presentation examines the relationship between the occurrence of tailings dam failures and the economic cycle of commodities. I should say upfront that I find parts of the presentation rather uncomfortable (especially the back-slapping aspects of the last slide regarding the oil sands industry), but the core point of the presentation is certainly thought provoking.

In the presentation they note that between 1968 and August 2009 there were 143 documented tailings dam failures worldwide. However, the occurrence of these failures appears to be cyclic with time, with peaks in the periods 1976-8, 1984-6, 1990-2, 1998-2000 and 2008-now. They compared these peaks with the cyclicity of the global copper and gold prices. The key part of the presentation is a table that compared the timing of the peaks:

The authors' conclusion is that there is a relationship between the peak in commodities prices and the occurrence of tailings dam failures, with a lag between the two of about two years. I must admit that I am a little unconvinced by the statistics of this analysis (I would like to see a proper regression analysis to see whether this link is statistically valid - and to be fair the authors recognise that this is not a scientifically-rigorous analysis), but the central point is one that is certainly very thought provoking. Increased commodity prices drive increased exploitation. The relationship between the peak in prices an the peak in accidents is ascribed by the authors to:

1. The rush to mine quickly means that design and construction standards may be low;
2. Rapid turn-over of key staff as new (presumably lucrative) opportunities arise during the boom;
3. The boom drives the development of resources in areas that are known to be difficult;
4. after the boom there are pressures to cut costs as commodity prices decline;
5. The boom drives the use of inappropriate designs imported from other locations;
6. There may be a lack of independent review, presumably to avoid the time delays and costs associated with this.

The implications of all this are sobering. The most recent boom ended in 2008, and the average lag is 25 months for copper and 29 months for gold. This should mean that the peak in tailings dam failures should be expected 12 to 30 months from now.

Hat-tip to Jack Caldwell's excellent I think Mining blog for highlighting this paper.

Presentation at the International Conference in Commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake

Below is my presentation from the conference in Taiwan. The file is on authorstream (my authorstream page is here - there are several of my presentations there). You should be able to play or download the presentation below or from the authorstream site. As ever, please acknowledge anything that you use from it.

The paper was a review of the key things that we have learnt from research into landslides triggered by this earthquake. However, at the start there is some more general material on earthquake-triggered landslides worldwide, which might be of some interest.

Feedback welcome of course!

09_09 Chi-Chi conference Petley blog

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Oh dear, more scientific hyperbole about climate change and natural disasters

My Alma Mater, University College London, is this week hosting an interesting colloquium on the theme of "Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards". This is a really interesting topic and the organisers should be applauded for attracting some really interesting talks. If it wasn't for the fact that I am heading out to Asia on Wednesday I would attend for sure. However, the Observer, which is the Sunday version of the UK broadsheet newspaper The Guardian, has today run a two page story about the conference. Again, this is not unwelcome - it is important that articles are run about the multi-faceted implications of climate change - but unfortunately the tone of the headline and lead material is an example of scientific hyperbole has left me speechless:

Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters
Scientists at a London conference next week will warn of earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions as the atmosphere heats up and geology is altered. Even Britain could face being struck by tsunamis.

Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.

Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.

Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.

At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth's crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.

Now, there is little doubt that there is a possible link between climate change and geophysical hazards, and that this is a topic that requires study. But to present the topic in this way is ridiculous given our current state of knowledge. Some elements of the quote above are probably untrue (melting glaciers will set of avalanches for example), and some of the remainder is speculative at best (e.g. widespread erosion in the UK, underwater landslides from the loss of ice sheets). Much of the rest has sensationalised climate impacts by presenting end member (i.e. large but unlikely) events as having a far great likelihood than is the reality - e.g. the UK being affected by tsunamis generated by underwater landslides caused by Arctic melting. This is possible, but is very, very unlikely, and there is little if any evidence that such events have occurred in the past.

But, unfortunately it gets worse. Bill McGuire, the Director of the Benfield Hazards Research Centre at UCL, is quoted as saying the following:

'"Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too," said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL)."Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,"'.

Now I like and admire Bill, I consider to be a friend, and I think that he has done a lot of good stuff. But this type of quote is really unhelpful. In my view there is no place for scientists to state things sthat the the oceans and atmosphere are "conspiring against us" - they are responding to the forcing that we are causing. And what can one say about a scientist stating that "Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something"?

The remainder of the article is rather more measured, with some not unreasonable quotes from some good scientists. However, the damage is done in the first part of the article, and of course in the headline.

Take a look at the comments on the Guardian web page. Unsurprisingly, the denialist community has jumped on this to undermine the research that is being undertaken on climate change. This is a great shame - anthropogenic climate change is a huge issue based on good science. Unfortunately, articles like this, based on speculation and exaggeration, are really unhelpful to those trying to do good science and to persuade society of the importance of this issue. If there is one thing that I have learnt in the last couple of years is that as scientists we need to be measured and realistic about what we write and say. The organisers of this conference would be wise to remember this.

Landslide sessions as the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco

The annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has long been the meeting of choice of the geoscience community, although these days it is being challenged by its European equivalent (the European Geosciences Union). The meeting this year is expected to attract about 16,000 earth and environmental scientists (I bet you didn't realise there were that many...).A frustration for the surface process and natural hazards communities has been the lack of representation at this meeting, but this year AGU has put this right.

Abstracts are due in early September, but I thought it would be helpful to pull together a list of the sessions potentially of interest to landslide scientists:

H56: Hydrometeorological Hazards in a Changing World
NH01: Natural Hazards General Contributions
NH03: Remote Sensing of Natural Hazards
NH04: The Development and Characterization of Natural Hazard Catalogs
NH06: Reducing Human Losses to Natural Hazards
NH14: Controls on Landslide Sizes and Size Distribution
NH18: Rainfall Induced Landslides: Prediction and Assessment
NH20: The Science of High-Probability, Unpredictable Hazards: From Theory to Practice
NH22: Extreme Natural Hazards: Risk Assessment and Forecasting
NH25: Energy in Natural Disaster Systems
EP02: Sediment Supply, Storage, and Delivery as Controlled by Hillslope-Channel Coupling

See you there!

Landslide sessions at EGU in 2009

Around this time of the year I always start to turn my attention to the European Geociences Union meeting in April. This is a huge get-together of earth scientists from around the world (last year >8,500 people attended). One of the largest divisions is "Natural Hazards", and the landslide section, of which I am the secretary, is the biggest single part of NH. Next year (2009) the meeting will be held in Vienna on 19th-24th April and it looks to be the best yet - we have seventeen proposed sessions for which we are inviting abstracts. These are as follows:

NH4.1/GM6.3: Landslides, ground-failures and mass movements induced by earthquakes and volcanic activity
Convener: V. Del Gaudio | Co-Conveners: R. W. Jibson , D. Keefer , J. Wasowski

NH4.2/HS11.7: Hydrological processes in landslide research: analysis and quantification
Convener: T.A. Bogaard | Co-Conveners: L. Borgatti , F. Lindenmaier , J.-P. Malet , E. Zehe

NH4.3: Landslides Triggered by Rainfall Events
Convener: K.-t. Chang | Co-Convener: M. Borga

HS11.1/NH4.4: Rainfall triggered landslides and debris flows and their effect on erosion and sediment yield in river catchments
Convener: J. Bathurst | Co-Conveners: G. Crosta , P. Frattini

GM6.2/NH4.5: Processes and rates of rock slope erosion: weathering, detachment, and transport
Convener: JR Moore | Co-Conveners: M. Krautblacher , S. Loew

NH4.6: Hydrological, hydraulic and mechanical effects of plants for slope stability
Convener: F. Florineth | Co-Conveners: F. Graf , H. P. Rauch , F. Rey

NH4.7/HS2.7: Natural and anthropogenic hazards related to water reservoirs
Convener: J. Rohn | Co-Conveners: L. King , T. Scholten

NH4.8: Large slope instabilities: from dating, triggering, monitoring and evolution modelling to hazard assessment
Convener: G. Crosta | Co-Conveners: L. H. Blikra , M. Jaboyedoff , O. Korup

NH4.9: Landslides monitoring and characterization using high resolution DEM, LIDAR and other DEM techniques
Convener: M. Jaboyedoff | Co-Conveners: R. Couture , M.-H. Derron , C. Froese

NH4.10: Impacts of climate change and land-use change on landslides
Convener: J. Wasowski | Co-Conveners: T. Dijkstra , N. Dixon , M. Winter

NH4.11: Time and intensity prediction in landslide hazard assessment
Convener: F. Catani | Co-Conveners: J.-P. Malet , J. L. Zezere

NH4.12: Remote sensing and geophysical techniques for investigating unstable slopes
Convener: J. Wasowski | Co-Conveners: V. Del Gaudio , H.-B. Havenith

NH4.13: Terrain Instability Analysis and Mass Movement Prevention
Convener: X. Meng | Co-Conveners: J. Ma , D. Wang

NH4.14/HS11.6: Landslide Forecasting
Convener: F. Guzzetti | Co-Conveners: G. G.R. Iovine , M. Parise

NH4.15: Landslide risk assessment methods and strategies
Convener: P. Reichenbach | Co-Conveners: A. Guenther , F. Guzzetti

NH4.16: Documentation and monitoring of landslides and debris flows for mathematical modelling and design of mitigation measures
Convener: L. FRANZI | Co-Conveners: M. Arattano , F. Tagliavini

NH4.17: Rockfalls - Analysis, Simulation and Protection
Convener: A. Volkwein | Co-Conveners: F. Berger , L. Dorren

This covers a vast range of landslide topics. Details are available here. Abstracts need to be submitted by 13th January 2009. Please do come along and join in!