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Satellite image analysis of a huge landslide at Yi Gong, Tibet, China

¹ State Key Laboratory of Resources & Environmental Information System, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
² Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
³ Institute of Remote Sensing Application, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⁴ Remote Sensing Center, Ministry of Land and Resources of China, Beijing, China

Received for publication 5 September 2000. Accepted for publication 29 March 2001.

The first 250 words of the full text of this article appear below. Images appear only in PDF or full-text views.

	Introduction

 
At about 8 pm in the evening of Sunday 9 April 2000, a huge landslide occurred in the Yi Gong district, Tibet, China (Fig. 1). A gigantic volume of soil and rock slipped from the upper hillside at more than 5500 mPD (metres above the Principal Datum, i.e, the Yellow Sea Level) along the Zamu gully, down to the Yi Gong River at about 2000 mPD, as shown in the site photos, a & b in Figure 2 respectively. It travelled about 8 km and lasted about 10 minutes. The landslide debris was composed of snow, glacial ice, trees, soil and rock (marble, slate and granite). It destroyed a 2.5 km long section of the highway connecting Qinghai province to Tibet, blocked the Yi Gong River at the toe of the slope, and resulted in the flooding of several villages. This landslide is estimated to have a volume of 300 000 000 m³ and is thus one of the largest landslides recorded in the world.

View larger version (19K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Location plan of the Yi Gong Landslide of 9 April 2000, Yi Gong, Tibet, China.

View larger version (107K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Site photographs illustrating the Yi Gong Landslide: (a) The Zone I (Landslide back-scar) and (b) Zone III (the Zamu gully mouth and the landslide debris dam).

Satellite images have . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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