Professor Petley, the author of the Landslide Blog, has an interesting discussion about a controversy in the geoengineering / geology community regarding the Oso landslide in Washington State. The Geotechnical Engineering Extreme Events Reconaissance (or GEER) report was recently issued for the OSO landslide. But USGS scientists have a different theory about the event. Both the GEER committee and the USGS agree that the Oso landslide was a two-fold failure event. But the difference in interpretation is the relative sizes of the two events and the mechanism they took. I won’t try and explain the controversy here as the post at the Landslide Blog does a great job of that. [Source: The Landslide Blog. Image: Landslide Blog]
A debris flow and flash flood warning system developed jointly by NOAA’s National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey will help protect Southern Californians from potentially devastating debris flows-commonly known as mud slides- and flash floods in and around burn areas created by the recent wildfires. 