On 22 March 2014, a massive, catastrophic landslide occurred near Oso, Washington, USA, sweeping more than 1 km across the adjacent valley flats and killing 43 people. For the following 5 weeks, hundreds of workers engaged in an exhaustive search, rescue, and recovery effort directly in the landslide runout path. These workers could not avoid the risks posed by additional large-scale slope collapses. In an effort to ensure worker safety, multiple agencies cooperated to swiftly deploy a monitoring and alerting system consisting of sensors, automated data processing and web-based display, along with defined communication protocols and clear calls to action for emergency management and search personnel. Guided by the principle that an accelerating landslide poses a greater threat than a steadily moving or stationary mass, the system was designed to detect ground motion and vibration using complementary monitoring techniques. Near real-time information was provided by continuous GPS, seismometers/geophones, and extensometers. This information was augmented by repeat-assessment techniques such as terrestrial and aerial laser scanning and time-lapse photography. Fortunately, no major additional landsliding occurred. However, we did detect small headscarp failures as well as slow movement of the remaining landslide mass with the monitoring system. This was an exceptional response situation and the lessons learned are applicable to other landslide disaster crises. They underscore the need for cogent landslide expertise and ready-to-deploy monitoring equipment, the value of using redundant monitoring techniques with distinct goals, the benefit of clearly defined communication protocols, and the importance of continued research into forecasting landslide behavior to allow timely warning.
Four hurricanes impacted the reefs of Florida in 2005. In this study, we evaluate the combined impacts of hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma on a population of Acropora palmata using a newly developed video‐mosaic methodology that provides a high‐resolution, spatially accurate landscape view of the reef benthos. Storm damage to A. palmata was surprisingly limited; only 2 out of 19 colonies were removed from the study plot at Molasses Reef. The net tissue losses for those colonies that remained were only 10% and mean diameter of colonies decreased slightly from 88.4 to 79.6 cm. In contrast, the damage to the reef framework was more severe, and a large section (6 m in diameter) was dislodged, overturned, and transported to the bottom of the reef spur. The data presented here show that two‐dimensional video‐mosaic technology is well‐suited to assess the impacts of physical disturbance on coral reefs and can be used to complement existing survey methodologies. 相似文献
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