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Rockfall
A rockfall or rock-fallWhittow, John (1984). ''Dictionary of Physical Geography''. London: Penguin, 1984. . is a quantity of Rock (geology), rock that has fallen freely from a cliff face. The term is also used for collapse of rock from roof or walls of mine or quarry workings. A rockfall is "a fragment of rock (a block) detached by sliding, toppling, or falling, that falls along a vertical or sub-vertical cliff, proceeds down slope by bouncing and flying along ballistic trajectories or by rolling on talus or debris slopes". Alternatively, a rockfall is "the natural downward motion of a detached block or series of blocks with a small volume involving free falling, bouncing, rolling, and sliding". The mode of failure differs from that of a rockslide. Causal mechanisms Favourable geology and climate are the principal causal mechanisms of rockfall, factors that include intact condition of the rock mass, discontinuities within the rockmass, weathering susceptibility, ground and surfa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Rockfall Protection Embankment
A rockfall protection embankment is an earthwork built in elevation with respect to the ground to intercept falling rock fragments before elements at risk such as roads and buildings are reached. This term is widely used in the rockfall community but the terms ''bunds'' and ''walls'' are sometimes used as alternatives. Comparison with other passive mitigation structures Rockfall protection embankments belong to the family of passive rockfall protection structures, comprising flexible barriers or galleries in particular. They are intended for rockfalls with kinetic energies up to tens of megajoules and are preferred over flexible barriers when the design impact is higher than 5000 kJ. Their declared advantages over other passive rockfall mitigation structures are low maintenance costs and reduced visual impact. Nevertheless, they are not appropriate on steep slopes and their construction generally requires extensive space and accessibility for heavy vehicles. History The very ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Capitólio Rockfall
On 8 January 2022, a rockfall occurred in a canyon of Furnas Lake in Capitólio, Minas Gerais, Brazil. A cliff face collapsed onto tourist pleasure boats on the lake, killing 10 people and leaving 32 others injured. Background Furnas Lake, a reservoir created by Furnas Dam in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, attracts tourists looking for speedboat rides and diving in the region. The canyons at the site are formed by walls more than tall. In an interview with ''GloboNews'', Lieutenant Pedro Aihara, a spokesman for the Fire Department of Minas Gerais, explained that the formation of the site is of sedimentary rocks and, therefore, more susceptible to the action of wind and rain. At the end of the morning of 8 January 2022, the same day as the accident, the Civil Defense of Minas Gerais had issued an alert for heavy rain in the Capitólio region with the possibility of "water head", warning members of the public to "avoid waterfalls during the rainy season". Collapse The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mass Wasting
Mass wasting, also known as mass movement, is a general term for the movement of rock (geology), rock or soil down slopes under the force of gravity. It differs from other processes of erosion in that the debris transported by mass wasting is not Entrainment (physical geography), entrained in a moving medium, such as water, wind, or ice. Types of mass wasting include Downhill creep, creep, solifluction, rockfalls, debris flows, and landslides, each with its own characteristic features, and taking place over timescales from seconds to hundreds of years. Mass wasting occurs on both terrestrial and submarine slopes, and has been observed on Earth, Mars, Venus, Jupiter's moon Io (moon), Io, and on many other bodies in the Solar System. Subsidence is sometimes regarded as a form of mass wasting. A distinction is then made between mass wasting by subsidence, which involves little horizontal movement, and mass wasting by slope movement. Rapid mass wasting events, such as landslides, ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Scree
Scree is a collection of broken rock fragments at the base of a cliff or other steep rocky mass that has accumulated through periodic rockfall. Landforms associated with these materials are often called talus deposits. The term ''scree'' is applied both to an unstable steep mountain slope composed of rock fragments and other debris, and to the mixture of rock fragments and debris itself. It is loosely synonymous with talus, material that accumulates at the base of a projecting mass of rock, or talus slope, a landform composed of talus. The term ''scree'' is sometimes used more broadly for any sheet of loose rock fragments mantling a slope, while ''talus'' is used more narrowly for material that accumulates at the base of a cliff or other rocky slope from which it has obviously eroded. Scree is formed by rockfall, which distinguishes it from colluvium. Colluvium is rock fragments or soil deposited by rainwash, sheetwash, or slow downhill creep, usually at the base of gentle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Landslide
Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater, in which case they are called submarine landslides. Gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, but there are other factors affecting slope stability that produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as heavy rainfall, an earthquake, a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable. Landslides are frequently made worse by human development (such as urban sprawl) and resource exploitation (such as mining and deforestation). Land degradation freque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Avalanche
An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a Grade (slope), slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be triggered spontaneously, by factors such as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, other animals, and earthquakes. Primarily composed of flowing snow and air, large avalanches have the capability to capture and move ice, rocks, and trees. Avalanches occur in two general forms, or combinations thereof: slab avalanches made of tightly packed snow, triggered by a collapse of an underlying weak snow layer, and loose snow avalanches made of looser snow. After being set off, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they capture more snow. If an avalanche moves fast enough, some of the snow may mix with the air, forming a powder snow avalanche. Though they appear to share similarities, avalanches are distinct from slush flows, Mudflow, mudslides, Landslide#Debris landslide, rock slides, and serac collap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Protection Forest
Protection forests are forests that mitigate or prevent the impact of a natural hazard, including a rockfall, avalanche, erosion, landslide, debris flow or flooding on people and their assets in mountainous areas. A protection forest generally covers the sloping area between a hazard potential (e.g. an unstable rock cliff or an avalanche release zone) and the endangered or exposed assets. In the Alps, protection forests are increasingly considered equal to engineered mitigation measures against natural hazards. In French, German, Italian and Slovenian protection forests are called respectively, ''Forêt de protection'', ''Schutzwald'', ''foreste di protezione'', ''varovalni gozdovi'', and even their maintain function is to protect soil and to prevent it from eroding or blowing away. Austrian law The Austrian law makes it clear the difference between a protection forest ''Schutzwald'' and a protected forest Bannwald. In this case it can be seen that a protection forest is larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Slope Stability
Slope stability refers to the condition of inclined soil or rock slopes to withstand or undergo movement; the opposite condition is called slope instability or slope failure. The stability condition of slopes is a subject of study and research in soil mechanics, geotechnical engineering, and engineering geology. Analyses are generally aimed at understanding the causes of an occurred slope failure, or the factors that can potentially trigger a slope movement, resulting in a landslide, as well as at preventing the initiation of such movement, slowing it down or arresting it through mitigation countermeasures. The stability of a slope is essentially controlled by the ratio between the available shear strength and the acting shear stress, which can be expressed in terms of a safety factor if these quantities are integrated over a potential (or actual) sliding surface. A slope can be globally stable if the safety factor, computed along any potential sliding surface running from the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Permafrost
Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below a meter (3 ft), the deepest is greater than . Similarly, the area of individual permafrost zones may be limited to narrow mountain summits or extend across vast Arctic regions. The ground beneath glaciers and ice sheets is not usually defined as permafrost, so on land, permafrost is generally located beneath a so-called active layer of soil which freezes and thaws depending on the season. Around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface is underlain by permafrost, covering a total area of around . This includes large areas of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia. It is also located in high mountain regions, with the Tibetan Plateau being a prominent example. Only a minority of permafrost exists in the Southern Hemi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Rock Bolt
A rock bolt is a long anchor bolt, for stabilizing rock excavations, which may be used in tunnels or rock cuts. It transfers load from the unstable exterior to the confined (and much stronger) interior of the rock mass. Rock bolts were first used in mining in the 1890s, with systematic use documented at the St Joseph Lead Mine in the U.S. in the 1920s. Rock bolts were applied to civil tunneling support in the U.S. and in Australia starting in the late 1940s. Rock bolts were used and further developed starting in 1947 by Australian engineers who began experimenting with four-meter-long expanding anchor rock bolts while working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. As shown in the figure, rock bolts are almost always installed in a pattern, the design of which depends on the Core recovery parameters#Rock quality designation, rock quality designation and the type of excavation. Rock bolts are an essential component of the New Austrian Tunneling method. As with anchor bolts, there are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
