Debris Avalanches and the Origin of First-Order Streams

Abstract

Landslides in general and debris avalanches in particular are of concern to engineers who encounter them in the course of highway construction (Whitney et al. 1971). They are also of interest to botanists, because they offer an opportunity for the study of plant succession on naturally denuded slopes (Flaccus 1959). Catastrophic natural processes are becoming of greater concern as population pressures force humans to live on less and less desirable, steeply sloping land. Geologists have been concerned with avalanches at least since 1826, when an avalanche was reported in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Lyell visited the site in 1845 and commented that the moving rock mass had removed the glacial striae from the bare granite surface testifying to the erosive power of the moving avalanche (Lyell 1875).