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The fault-controlled Chengtian landslide triggered by rainfall on 20 May 2021 in Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, China

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Abstract

The geological structures of fault zones control the occurrence of landslides and determine their characteristics and motion styles, especially in igneous rock areas with high rock strength. On 20 May 2021, a fault-controlled landslide occurred during heavy rainfall near Chengtian village in Zhejiang Province, China. The landslide abruptly destroyed a provincial highway in front of the slope and rushed into a river resulting in a barrier lake, which blocked local traffic for 17 days. The pseudotachylites, scratches and striations observed on the exposed impermeable breccia bedrock confirmed the sliding surface as part of the Cretaceous fault plane. The original rhyolite slope located on the fault zone had been subjected to weathering, creating favourable geological and hydrogeological structures for a landslide. Due to the low fluidity of the sliding materials, the sliding mass decelerated quickly and blocked the river, resulting in a geo-disaster chain. This paper presents a typical instance of landslides controlled by geological structures on a fault zone.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the rainfall data in this paper provided by the Lishui Meteorological Data Center. Thanks to Dr. Kounghoon Nam from Tongji University for his help in the field investigation.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42107170), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. BX2021214 and 2021M702493), the Shanghai Post-doctoral Excellence Program (Grant No. 2020423) and the Fundamental Research Funds of China for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Fawu Wang, Ye Chen, Xingliang Peng, Guolong Zhu, Kongming Yan & Zhenhua Ye

  2. Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Fawu Wang & Zhenhua Ye

Authors
  1. Fawu Wang
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  2. Ye Chen
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  3. Xingliang Peng
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  4. Guolong Zhu
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  5. Kongming Yan
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  6. Zhenhua Ye
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Correspondence to Ye Chen.

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Wang, F., Chen, Y., Peng, X. et al. The fault-controlled Chengtian landslide triggered by rainfall on 20 May 2021 in Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, China. Landslides 19, 1751–1765 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-022-01891-x

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