One year ago in Logan, Utah, a landslide caused a portion of an irrigation canal to fail, resulting in a secondary mudslide. A mother and two children were killed in the slope failure. Portions of the landslide area remain relatively untouched one year later as wrongful death lawsuits naming the City of Logan, Utah Department of Transportation, Utah State University are being resolved in court. Negotiations between family members and the private canal company could also end up in court. The City has acquired a number of the affected properties and hopes to turn the area into green space. [Source: The Salt Lake Tribune. Image: Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune]
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Utah Releases Landslide Susceptibility Map
The Utah Geologic Survey has released a "Landslide Susceptibility Map of Utah". They apparently relied quite heavily on GIS based thresholding of existing slope angles but only after they had statistically analyzed failure angles for particular geologic units. So it sounds like they throw the known landslides, the geologic map of Utah and a DEM into the GIS a blend it all up. Perhaps a slight oversimplification!
Landslide Video But Not What You Think
There is nothing funny about landslides, particularly when you consider the tremendous loss of life that happens all the time around the world, most recently in Taiwan, China, Sierra Leone and elsewhere. But the well known humor site, the Onion has taken a pretty good crack at this usually unfunny subject in their video “news” clip Reporter In Helicopter Pretty Sure Landslide Down There Somewhere. Its a very amusing video that’s really about journalists and their attempts to get the scoop about a story, not really about landslides at all. Click through for the embedded video. Happy weekend. […]