Irish peat slides 2006–2010

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of peat landslide events in Ireland since 2003, when two significant events occurred. Since 2003, there have been at least 13 such events. Several of these events included more than one slide. It is also likely that there have been unrecorded slides. It seems that there is an increasing incidence of such events, but they seem to occur in clusters with intervening quiet periods. These clusters coincide with periods of intense rainfall. For many slides, at least two causal factors can be identified. Primarily these comprised intense rainfall but human activities such as road construction and peat cutting also contributed to the slides. Detailed geotechnical testing of the peat, including laboratory direct simple shear tests (DSS), is reported for two of the slides. Back-analysis of these two failures suggests that the mobilised strength of the material in the failure surface is similar to that measured in the DSS tests. However, conventional geotechnical analyses need to be treated with caution as they fail to account for the complex interactions in the sliding surface and in particular the lubricating role of water.