Jane Qiu, a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, took to quake-stricken Nepal last month — venturing into landslide-riddled terrains and shadowing scientists studying what makes slopes more susceptible to failure after an earthquake. The journey proved to be more perilous than she had expected. What would it be like to lose all …[Read More]
landslides
Geosciences Column: An international effort to understand the hazard risk posed by Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake
Nine months ago the ground in Nepal shook, and it shook hard: on April 25th 2015 the M7.8 Gorkha earthquake struck and was followed by some 250 aftershocks, five of which were greater than M 6.0. The devastation left behind in the aftermath of such an event, and how to coordinate disaster-relief efforts in a …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Flying Rocks
The picture was taken at a hillslope close to the glacier tongue of the Great Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps. With a length of 23 km it is located in the eastern Bernese Alps of Switzerland and composed of the three smaller glaciers Aletschfirn, Jungfraufirn and Eternal snow field converging at Concordia …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Drilling a landslide
That landslides are hazardous goes without saying; the risk posed by them will largely depend on where they occur and their exact characteristics, which makes understanding the mechanisms which trigger them, as well as predicting when they might happen, extremely difficult. Today’s Imaggeo on Mondays image, brought to you by Ekrem Canli, a PhD student …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Landslide on the Cantabrian coastline
Shimmering blue seas, rocky outcrops and lush green hills sides; this idyllic landscape is punctuated by a stark reminder that geohazards are all around us. Irene Pérez Cáceres, a PhD student at the University of Granada (Spain) explains the geomorphology behind this small scale landslide on the Asturian coastline. This picture was taken in May …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Do roads mean landslides are more likely?
Landslides have been in the news frequently over the past 12 months or so. It’s not surprising considering their devastating consequences and potential impact on nearby communities. Data collected by Dave Petley in his Landslide Blog shows that from January to July 2014 alone, there were 222 landslides that caused loss of life, resulting in …[Read More]
Call for abstracts: The 9th Alexander von Humboldt Conference
The Alexander von Humboldt Conference is part of the EGU’s Topical Conference Series, and will be taking place in Istanbul, Turkey (24 – 28 March 2014). The aim of the meeting is to open a forum on natural hazard events that have a high impact and a large destructive potential, focussing on the Euro-Mediterranean Region in …[Read More]
Natural hazards workshop videos are online!
Every year, the EGU host a two day workshop for primary and secondary school teachers during the General Assembly. Geosciences Information For Teachers (GIFT) workshops aim to shorten the time between discovery and textbook, while providing teachers with material that can be used in the classroom. This year, the workshop was on natural hazards, with …[Read More]