The Arizona Department of Water Resources has an excellent program to monitor a somewhat unique geologic hazard – land subsidence. Caused by compaction of valley sediments in areas of declining groundwater table, it can create significant problems for infrastructure such as drainage facilities, flood control works, and gravity flow utilities such as sewer lines. It can also induce a secondary geologic hazard, earth fissures. The ADWR has been using InSAR data supplemented with GPS surveying and other data since 1997 to monitor a number of land subsidence areas in Arizona. This is the first of what I presume will be a series of comprehensive reports on their program. [Source: Read the PDF report from the ADWR. Image: ADWR Land Subsidence Page]
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US 89 Bitter Springs Landslide Video Updates
Since I last posted about this landslide, ADOT has added several videos to their YouTube channel. It’s clear that this highway is going to be closed for the long term. ADOT and their on-call geotechnical consultant tasked with this project, Kleinfelder, are currently drilling boreholes to attempt to characterize the failure surface and determine what the geometry of the failure surface is. They are installing at least 10 inclinometers to try to determine the location of the slip plane or planes at depth and they have two extensometers to measure if any additional movement occurs. They are also performing LIDAR surveys as well. Check out the videos below.
Initial ADOT Video Describing the Failure
Click through for the videos!
Geotechnical investigation and recommendations complete for US 89 Bitter Springs Landslide
July 30, 2013
rockman
Geologic Hazards
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