Through the study of an unusual, long-lasting slide, has developed a new technique to make prediction easier and more accurate.
Slow-moving landslides—places where the land creeps sluggishly downhill over long periods of time—are relatively stable until they aren’t. But because landslides are often inaccessible and do not respond uniformly to changes, they can be difficult to predict.
Through the study of an unusual, long-lasting slide, a research team from the University of California, Berkeley, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed a new technique to make prediction both easier and more accurate. The team centered their research on the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) long Slumgullion landslide in southwestern Colorado. In motion for more than a century, the landslide provides an ideal natural laboratory for studying the dynamics of slow-moving landslides.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
