Previously undiscovered landslide deposits in Harrison Lake, British Columbia, Canada

Hughes, Katie E.; Geertsema, Marten; Kwoll, Eva; Koppes, Michèle; Roberts, Nicholas J.; Clague, John J.; Rohland, S.

doi:10.1007/s10346-020-01514-3

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…For example, Miller's (1960) USGS paper on the 1958 Lituya Bay mega-tsunami is unlikely to have achieved widespread academic circulation. This event, and others such as two damaging instances of rockslide-triggered tsunamis in Norway in the 1930s (Harbitz et al 2014;Hughes et al 2021), were probably unknown in Italy in 1963. On the other hand, Italy had its own historical examples including Alleghe (see Introduction) which must have been known about; then the wave produced by the landslide into the new Pontesei reservoir in 1959, with a runup against the opposite shore 20 m above the water level (Semenza , 2010, led to investigations of the possibility of a similar type of event at Vaiont.…”

Section: State-of-knowledge Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Hazards from lakes and reservoirs: new interpretation of the Vaiont disaster

Dykes

Bromhead

2022

J. Mt. Sci.

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Hazards in reservoirs and lakes arising from subaerial landslides causing impact waves (or ‘lake tsunamis’) are now well known, with several recent examples having been investigated in detail. The potential scale of such hazards was not widely known at the time of the Vaiont dam project in the 1950s and early 1960s, although a small wave triggered by a landslide at another new reservoir nearby in the Dolomites (northern Italy) drew the possible hazard to the attention of the Vaiont project’s managers. The Vaiont disaster in 1963 arose from a combination of disparate and seemingly unrelated factors and circumstances that led to an occurrence that could not have been imagined at that time. The ultimate cause was a very large landslide moving very rapidly into a reservoir and displacing the water. The resulting wave overtopped the dam to a height of around 175 m and around 2000 people were killed. This paper identifies and examines all of the issues surrounding the Vaiont dam and landslide in order to identify causal factors, contributory factors (including aggravating factors) and underlying factors. In doing so, it demonstrates that the disaster arose from the Vaiont dam project and cannot be attributed simply to the landslide. Underlying geological factors gave rise to the high speed of the landslide, which would have occurred anyway at some time. However, without the contributory factors that account for the presence of the reservoir, i.e. the choice of location for the project and management of the project with respect to a possible landslide hazard, there would have been no disaster. Indeed, the disaster could have been avoided if the reservoir could have been emptied pending further ground investigations. Understanding of this case provides many lessons for future dam projects in mountainous locations but also highlights an ongoing and perhaps under-appreciated risk from similar events involving other water bodies including geologically recent lakes formed behind natural landslide dams.

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Section: State-of-knowledge Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Hazards from lakes and reservoirs: new interpretation of the Vaiont disaster

Dykes

Bromhead

2022

J. Mt. Sci.

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“…For example, human-induced subaqueous MTDs may be caused by coastal infrastructure works (Figure 10A,B; [99,161]), whereas other MTDs could be traced back to delta collapses (Figure 10B; [92,162]) or earthquake-induced failure of hemipelagic slope sequences [161,163]. Moreover, high-resolution bathymetric data allow the identification of deposits related to terrestrial mass movements such as rockfalls, rockslides, and rock avalanches (Figure 10C [114,[164][165][166]). [99]); (B): 3D perspective on the bathymetric expression of a subaqueous mass movement in Lake Zurich.…”

Section: Bathymetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Event Deposits in Lake Sediments

et al. 2022

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Event deposits in lake sediments provide invaluable chronicles of geodynamic and climatic natural hazards on multi-millennial timescales. Sediment archives are particularly useful for reconstructing high-impact, low-frequency events, which are rarely observed in instrumental or historical data. However, attributing a trigger mechanism to event deposits observed in lake sediments can be particularly challenging as different types of events can produce deposits with very similar lithological characteristics, such as turbidites. In this review paper, we summarize the state of the art on event deposits in paleolimnology. We start by describing the sedimentary facies typical of floods, glacial lake outburst floods, avalanches, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and spontaneous delta collapses. We then describe the most indicative methods that can be applied at the scale of lake basins (geophysical survey, multiple coring) and on sediment cores (sedimentology, inorganic and organic geochemistry, biotic approach). Finally, we provide recommendations on how to obtain accurate chronologies on sediment cores containing event deposits, and ultimately date the events. Accurately identifying and dating event deposits has the potential to improve hazard assessments, particularly in terms of the return periods, recurrence patterns, and maximum magnitudes, which is one of the main geological challenges for sustainable worldwide development.

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“…A bathymetric survey of Harrison Lake reported that ~4 million cubic meters of landslide debris were deposited on the lake floor, which implies the potential Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 3999 2 of 17 for tsunamigenic landslides [8]. Furthermore, accelerated glacier melting and retreat can increase landslide activity in high mountainous areas, as observed in BC [7,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission InSAR Assessment of Slope Movements in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada

et al. 2021

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Landslides are the most common natural hazard in British Columbia. The province has recorded the largest number of historical landslide fatalities in Canada, and damage to infrastructure comes at a great cost. In order to understand the potential impacts of landslides, radar remote sensing has become a cost-effective method for detecting downslope movements. This study investigates downslope movements in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, with Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The 2-dimensional time-series analysis with Sentinel-1 ascending and descending InSAR pairs from October 2017 to June 2021 observed distinct earthflow movements of up to ~15 cm/year in the east–west direction. The Grinder Creek, Red Mountain, Yalakom River, and Retaskit Creek earthflows previously documented are still active, with east–west movements of ~30 cm over the past four years. New RCM data acquired from June 2020 to September 2020 with a 4-day revisit capability were compared to 12-day Sentinel-1 InSAR pairs. The 4-day RCM InSAR pairs at higher spatial resolution showed better performance by detecting relatively small-sized slope movements within a few hundred meters, which were not clearly observed by Sentinel-1. The temporal variabilities observed from the RCM InSAR showed great potential for observing detailed slope movements within a narrower time window.

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Previously undiscovered landslide deposits in Harrison Lake, British Columbia, Canada

Cited by 7 publications

References 34 publications

Hazards from lakes and reservoirs: new interpretation of the Vaiont disaster

Hazards from lakes and reservoirs: new interpretation of the Vaiont disaster

A Review of Event Deposits in Lake Sediments

Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission InSAR Assessment of Slope Movements in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada

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