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Behaviour of retrogressive thaw slumps in northern Canada—three-year monitoring results from 18 sites

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Abstract

Eighteen (18) retrogressive thaw slumps (typical landslides in ice-rich permafrost) in northern Canada were monitored for 3 years to investigate the characteristics of their retrogressive behaviour. The head scarp retreat distances and scarp wall heights were measured annually. The first year monitoring results from 13 of the sites were released earlier, which demonstrated a correlation between thaw retrogression rate and scarp wall height. More data were obtained from a subsequent 2 years of monitoring and with five monitoring locations added. The additional data enhanced the initial findings that the retrogression rate increased with the increase of the scarp wall height. An updated correlation between the retrogression rate and scarp wall height is presented in this paper. The effect of slope orientation on thaw slump retrogression was also investigated. The data provided evidence that the occurrence of the retrogressive thaw slumps had no preference over slope orientation. The retrogression rates were also not affected by the slope facing direction.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Wendy Sladen for her careful review and comments on the manuscript that helped improve the quality of the paper. This paper was released under an internal ESS Contribution Number 20140195.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0E8, Canada

    Baolin Wang, Bhuwani Paudel & Haoqiang Li

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  1. Baolin Wang
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  2. Bhuwani Paudel
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  3. Haoqiang Li
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Correspondence to Baolin Wang.

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Wang, B., Paudel, B. & Li, H. Behaviour of retrogressive thaw slumps in northern Canada—three-year monitoring results from 18 sites. Landslides 13, 1–8 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0549-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0549-y

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