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Detecting Potential Climate Signals in Large Slope Failures in Cold Mountain Regions

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Landslide Science and Practice

Abstract

Concern and interest are rising that climate change may have an adverse impact on slope stability in mountain regions. Rock slopes in high mountain areas with glaciers and permafrost are particularly sensitive to atmospheric warming. In fact, several large rock slope failures have been observed in high mountain areas around the world in recent years. However, the detection of changes in the frequency or magnitude of such slope failures is fraught with a number of difficulties and has only recently been addressed. Here we outline several approaches that could be used to detect a change in high mountain slope failure activity. Rather than present research results, we provide a conceptual design of how research in this field could be strengthened.

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Acknowledgments

Some of the data presented here has been generated in projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 190, Zurich, CH-8057, Switzerland

    Christian Huggel & Demian Schneider

  2. Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Simon Allen

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    John J. Clague

  4. Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), Trondheim, Norway

    Luzia Fischer

  5. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Potsdam University, Potsdam, Germany

    Oliver Korup

Authors
  1. Christian Huggel
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  2. Simon Allen
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  3. John J. Clague
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  4. Luzia Fischer
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  5. Oliver Korup
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  6. Demian Schneider
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Huggel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Geological Survey of Italy, ISPRA - Italian Institute for Environmen, Vitaliano Brancati 60, Rome, 00144, Italy

    Claudio Margottini

  2. ICL - International Consortium on Landsl, Via La Pira 4, Florence, 50121, Italy

    Paolo Canuti

  3. Kyoto University Uji-Campus, UNITWIN Headquarters Building, Uji, 611-0011, Kyoto, Japan

    Kyoji Sassa

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Huggel, C., Allen, S., Clague, J.J., Fischer, L., Korup, O., Schneider, D. (2013). Detecting Potential Climate Signals in Large Slope Failures in Cold Mountain Regions. In: Margottini, C., Canuti, P., Sassa, K. (eds) Landslide Science and Practice. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31337-0_46

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