Drought, deluge turned stable landslide into disaster
Friday, February 8, 2019 - 07:22
in Earth & Climate
"Stable landslide" sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there are indeed places on Earth where land has been creeping downhill slowly, stably and harmlessly for as long as a century. But stability doesn't necessarily last forever. For the first time, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and collaborating institutions have documented the transition of a stable, slow-moving landslide into catastrophic collapse, showing how drought and extreme rains likely destabilized the slide.