EGS Seminar – Tuesday 12th March 2013

Tuesday 12^th March 2013, Room E419, 4^th floor, John Dalton East Building, from 1.00-2.00pm.

 

Can Rock Slope Failure Clusters Detect Concentrated Erosion of Bedrock in Mountain Areas?
David Jarman, Mountain Landform Research

A near-complete inventory of all significant bedrock mass movements (RSFs) in the British mountain ranges confirms the tendency to clustering and sparsity across similar terrains and lithologies already mapped for Larger RSFs in the Highlands. A finer grain view identifies additional smaller clusters of comparable character. After rejecting previous explanations for RSF incidence, the best association is with glacial breaches of main and secondary watersheds, implying recent concentrated erosion of bedrock (CEB); some other CEB contexts are discussed.

The key research issue is to construct a model of all the stresses acting on a mountain slope, in order to factor in the effects of bulk erosion possibly hundreds of metres deep. However this is proving intractable. A case study in Glen Roy provides the first geodetic evidence of rebound in a glacial breach, which may provoke development of a retrospective model.