Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river
Field evidence is presented to demonstrate that a very large landslide blocked the Jinsha River (the main stem of the Yangtze) near the present day town of Qiaojia, Yunnan Province. The discovery is significant because no persistent river-blocking landslide has been reported so far downstream in a m...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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SpringerOpen
2014
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47254/ |
| _version_ | 1848797500971941888 |
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| author | Higgitt, David L. Zhang, Xinbao Liu, Weiming Tang, Qiang He, Xiubin Ferrant, Sylvain |
| author_facet | Higgitt, David L. Zhang, Xinbao Liu, Weiming Tang, Qiang He, Xiubin Ferrant, Sylvain |
| author_sort | Higgitt, David L. |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Field evidence is presented to demonstrate that a very large landslide blocked the Jinsha River (the main stem of the Yangtze) near the present day town of Qiaojia, Yunnan Province. The discovery is significant because no persistent river-blocking landslide has been reported so far downstream in a major catchment. At the location of the landslide dam the upstream catchment area is 445 × 103 km^2. Sediments deposited behind the dam indicate that the minimum crest height was approximately 200 m with a lake volume of 11.4 +/− 1.3 km^3. The landslide occurred on the western (Sichuan) side of the river and displaced an estimated volume of at least 3.75 km^3, with material riding up to 550 m above the river on the eastern (Yunnan) side of the valley. The location is at the intersection of the Xiaojiang and Zemuhe fault zones which form part of the eastern boundary fault of the Sichuan-Yunnan Fault Block, an area where many earthquakes exceeding magnitude 7.0 have been documented in the historical record. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:04:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-47254 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:04:52Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | SpringerOpen |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-472542020-05-04T16:47:03Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47254/ Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river Higgitt, David L. Zhang, Xinbao Liu, Weiming Tang, Qiang He, Xiubin Ferrant, Sylvain Field evidence is presented to demonstrate that a very large landslide blocked the Jinsha River (the main stem of the Yangtze) near the present day town of Qiaojia, Yunnan Province. The discovery is significant because no persistent river-blocking landslide has been reported so far downstream in a major catchment. At the location of the landslide dam the upstream catchment area is 445 × 103 km^2. Sediments deposited behind the dam indicate that the minimum crest height was approximately 200 m with a lake volume of 11.4 +/− 1.3 km^3. The landslide occurred on the western (Sichuan) side of the river and displaced an estimated volume of at least 3.75 km^3, with material riding up to 550 m above the river on the eastern (Yunnan) side of the valley. The location is at the intersection of the Xiaojiang and Zemuhe fault zones which form part of the eastern boundary fault of the Sichuan-Yunnan Fault Block, an area where many earthquakes exceeding magnitude 7.0 have been documented in the historical record. SpringerOpen 2014-04-07 Article PeerReviewed Higgitt, David L., Zhang, Xinbao, Liu, Weiming, Tang, Qiang, He, Xiubin and Ferrant, Sylvain (2014) Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river. Geoscience Letters, 1 (1). p. 6. ISSN 2196-4092 https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2196-4092-1-6 doi:10.1186/2196-4092-1-6 doi:10.1186/2196-4092-1-6 |
| spellingShingle | Higgitt, David L. Zhang, Xinbao Liu, Weiming Tang, Qiang He, Xiubin Ferrant, Sylvain Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title | Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title_full | Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title_fullStr | Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title_full_unstemmed | Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title_short | Giant palaeo-landslide dammed the Yangtze river |
| title_sort | giant palaeo-landslide dammed the yangtze river |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47254/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47254/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47254/ |