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The Mogangling giant landslide triggered by the 1786 Moxi M 7.75 earthquake, China

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Abstract

A good understanding of seismic giant landslides could provide favourable guidance for seismic stability evaluation of nearby slopes. Here, an excellent example of a catastrophic seismic landslide named the Mogangling giant landslide (MGL), located upstream along the Dadu River and triggered by the 1786 Moxi M 7.75 earthquake, is analysed for its deposit characteristics, failure mechanism and dammed lake. The MGL, with a volume of approximately 4500 × 104 m3, 450 m long and 1000 m wide, blocked the Dadu River completely and caused over 100 000 deaths when the landslide dam broke. The MGL occurred on the upper part of a narrow granite ridge; a potentially unstable wedge-shaped rock mass was separated from the remaining massif by unloading fissures and an active fault (Detuo fault) that just crossed the slope foot. The Moxi earthquake coupled with strong site amplification triggered the MGL, which blocked the Dadu River; the elevation of the dam crest was approximately 130 m higher than the present river level. The dammed lake had a volume of approximately 9.504 × 108 m3, an area of 19.91 km2 and a length of approximately 31 km; the peak flow of the outburst flood was larger than 7100 m3/s. After hundreds of years of concave bank erosion, the deposit is divided into the right bank deposit (main deposit) and left bank deposit (residual deposit).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41877235, 42007273), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC1501000), the National Science Funds for Creative Research Groups of China (Grant No. 41521002) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M673292). The authors express their gratitude for this financial assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Earth Surface Processes, and Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Bo Zhao & Lijun Su

  2. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, China

    Bo Zhao, Yunsheng Wang, Jiangwei Liu & Gang Jin

  3. Architecture and Art College, Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College, Yiwu, 322000, China

    Junfeng Wu

  4. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lijun Su

  5. China-Pakistan Joint Research Center On Earth Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Lijun Su

  6. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lijun Su

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  1. Bo Zhao
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Zhao, B., Wang, Y., Wu, J. et al. The Mogangling giant landslide triggered by the 1786 Moxi M 7.75 earthquake, China. Nat Hazards 106, 459–485 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04471-1

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