Discussion: Mud slide in Washington

Interesting blog (thanks to Cedar Creek for letting folks know about it...)

I've been looking for an older (several years at least) lidar paper that was about finding old mudslides under tree cover. I've done some searching, and I can't find it. What was notable was the aerial (or all returns image) showing the tree canopy, and then another lidar shaded relief image of the ground surface, showing a large but obvious slide. What I have found is a lot of papers without really nice images.

It must be an active topic, because there is a recent book for using lidar to find and predict mudslides, and papers from all over: Seattle, Oregon, BC, Asia, Europe.

Also---this makes me feel---uh---good. I live in Cincinnati:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/26/294...

From sherpes' blog link:
....Note the relatively new clear cut harvest. There have been and is ongoing debate regarding clear cut harvest and water infiltration into deep-seated glacial sediments...

No debate as far as the affected residents are concerned. They've watched helplessly as the slopes above them have been logged for years. Efforts were made to shut down the logging...but ultimately the threat of lost jobs and lost income prevailed, and logging continued.

Watching Ax Men on the History Channel is a fascinating way to experience the death, destruction and destabilization that is occurring on the steep terrain of the Pacific Northwest. But with changes in weather patterns predicted to bring more drenching rain storms, such catastrophic slides can only continue. Tragic.

Democratizing lidar distribution, plus landslide images:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023244512_...

Watching this from the other side of the world, even leaving aside any questions about logging, I am astonished that development was allowed in a place with a substantial and recent history of major landslides.

Good article cedarcreek! Keep 'em coming.

As one commenter said, the real challenge will be to get state funding to set up an office to analyze this new sobering Lidar information...and then pay to relocate the thousands of households thought to be in slide danger zones.

But ultimately, this is just one more hidden cost of our car-culture, which has allowed sprawl and settlement in the most unlikely boondocks. A nice $5/gal "carbon tax" on gasoline would help reverse that sprawl, and pay for the consequences.

How about a devastating $5/gal tax? I agree with the general direction, but the current US society would be in serious trouble at $9/gal now. I also happen to think more expensive gas would be strangely good for US O development.

Re limited resources: "I fear we are mold on bread and the baker retired."

It seems a bit much to credit these deaths to our car-culture, or even the desire to sprawl and settle in the remote boondocks to that culture. On average, about 25 deaths per year in the US occur in landslides, and a lot of those landslide deaths are not particularly out in the boondocks (the fatality levels tend to be higher if the population level is also up, such as in 1906 San Francisco). The car culture has plenty enough to be held accountable for in the 30,000 a year that die in car accidents here each year (and the additional 700 cyclists that also get killed on the roads, about 90% of which also involve a car in the accident). But going back to before cars were invented, Tompkins County where I am situated went from a state of approximately 100% forestation in 1700 before white settlers moved into the area in a big way down to 19% forest coverage by 1900, as small farmers moved in and cleared off the land. Now, after the advent of the car, that land has gone back to somewhere near the NY state average of around 63% forest coverage. Looking at the isolation of a lot of those early farmhouses (there are a scattering of old cellar pits, stone walls, etc. on essentially every orienteering map our club owns) gives an interesting sense of just how isolated many of those early families were, and how strikingly unsuitable the land for modern farming practices. There may well be a significant subset of our population that prefers living in near isolation to living in the midst of a city, but actively following such a preference would appear to long predate the convenience of the automobile. All this isn't too say that a good stiff gasoline tax might not be a really good thing, just that I don't think this particular landslide particularly bolsters the case for such a tax.

As the blog author suggests, the biggest driver of slope instability in that location was undercutting the toe of the slope by the river. Although the army corps tried to limit erosion at the toe, it is clear that instability had been triggered, probably leading to increased water infiltration rates at the crest of the slide in tension cracks, weakening the soil and building groundwater pressures that drive these things. Based on the deep seated nature of the slide and the fact there looks to be a long history of similar slides along that section of river, probably dating back well before logging occurred, I think logging would be quite a minor contributor to the slide.

Didn't everybody live in the boondocks before we started building cities? But better, I suppose, for everybody to live in nice safe urban areas where disasters don't occur, like San Francisco or Chicago.

I happened to see this referenced in an article about the mudslide:

a national LIDAR mapping effort is planned to start in 2015

Anyone know anything about this? Scope, schedule, etc?

Here is the USGS Landslides Hazards Program
http://landslides.usgs.gov/

I fear we are mold

To read a certain site, the mold appear to be more concerned with ideological purity than with the baker's plans. Friendly, refined, dead mold.

From twitter today---A lot of Oso Landslide stuff in this Teacher's Resource for teaching about Hazards in Geoscience:

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/hazards/eve...