Volume, gravitational potential energy reduction, and regional centroid position change in the wake of landslides trigge
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Volume, gravitational potential energy reduction, and regional centroid position change in the wake of landslides triggered by the 14 April 2010 Yushu earthquake of China Chong Xu & Xiwei Xu & Hamid Reza Pourghasemi & Biswajeet Pradhan & Javed Iqbal
Received: 6 March 2013 / Accepted: 24 June 2013 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2013
Abstract In recent years, earthquake-triggered landslides have attracted much attention in the scientific community as a main form of seismic ground response. However, little work has been performed concerning the volume and gravitational potential energy reduction of earthquake-triggered landslides and their severe effect on landscape change. This paper presents a quantitative study on the volume, gravitational potential energy reduction, and change in landscape related to landslides triggered by the 14 April 2010 Yushu earthquake. At least 2,036 landslides were triggered by the earthquake. A total landslide scar area of 1.194 km2 was delineated from the visual interpretation of aerial photographs and satellite images and was supported by selected C. Xu (*) : X. Xu Key Laboratory of Active Tectonics and Volcano, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, 1# Huayanli, Chaoyang District, PO Box 9803, Beijing 100029, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] C. Xu e-mail: [email protected] H. R. Pourghasemi College of Natural Resources and Marine Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Nur, Iran B. Pradhan Faculty of Engineering, Spatial and Numerical Modeling Research Group, Department of Civil Engineering, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan 43400, Malaysia J. Iqbal Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China J. Iqbal Department of Earth Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, Pakistan
field checking. In this paper, we focus on possible answers to the following five questions: (1) What is the total volume of the 2,036 landslides triggered by the earthquake, and what is the average landslide erosion thickness in the earthquakestricken area? (2) What are the elevations of all landslide materials in relation to pre- and post-landsliding? (3) How much was the gravitational potential energy reduced due to the sliding of these landslide materials? (4) What is the average elevation change caused by these landslides in the study area? (5) What is the vertical change of the regional centroid position above sea level, as induced by these landslides? It is concluded that the total volume of the 2,036 landslides is 2.9399×106 m3. The landslide erosion thickness throughout the study area is 2.02 mm. The materials of these landslides moved from an elevation of 4,145.243 to 4,104.697 m, resulting in a decreased distance of 40.546 m. The gravitational potential energy reduction related to the landslides triggered by the earthquake was 2.9213×1012 J. The average regional elevation of the study area is 4,427.160 m, a value consistent with the assumption that the accum
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