EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

A Village in Danger

Himalayan Mountains
Tibet

Explanation:  Run for it!

This remote village -- somewhere between Shigatse and Lhasa in Tibet, and perched on the slope of a Himalayan mountain -- has narrowly escaped a catastrophe.

Just below, a portion of the mountain has slid away, creating a choking cloud of dust and sandy soil lofted into the air.  

With luck, the wind has pushed the cloud away from the buildings and the people ... but check out how close they came to a terrible event:

  
Surprisingly, some landslides -- and their cousins, the snow avalanche -- can create useful habitat for wildlife.  

But some past landslides in Tibet have been utterly devastating, such as the ultra-massive slide in 2000 that blocked the entire Yigong Zangpo River in the Tibetan Plateau, causing a horrendous flood 62 days later that was felt as far as the main floodplain of the Brahmaputra River in India.  

Information:
     Delaney, K.G., and S.G. Evans.  2015.  The 2000 Yigong landslide (Tibetan Plateau), rockslide-dammed lake and outburst flood: Review, remote sensing analysis, and process modelling.  Geomorphology 246:377-393.
     Shang, Y., Z. Yang, L. Li, D. Liu, Q. Liao, and Y. Wang.  2003.  A super-large landslide in Tibet in 2000:  background, occurrence, disaster, and origin.  Geomorphology 54(3-4):225-243.