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The July 2007 rock and ice avalanches at Mount Steele, St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, Canada

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Abstract

A large rock and ice avalanche occurred on the north face of Mount Steele, southwest Yukon Territory, Canada, on July 24, 2007. In the days and weeks preceding the landslide, several smaller avalanches initiated from the same slope. The ice and rock debris traveled a maximum horizontal distance 5.76 km with a maximum vertical descent of 2,160 m, leaving a deposit 3.66 km2 in area on Steele Glacier. The seismic magnitude estimated from long-period surface waves (M s) is 5.2. Modeling of the waveforms suggests an estimated duration of approximately 100 s and an average velocity of between 35 and 65 m/s. This landslide is one of 18 large rock avalanches known to have occurred since 1899 on slopes adjacent to glaciers in western Canada. We describe the setting, reconstruct the event chronology and present a preliminary characterization of the Mount Steele ice and rock avalanches based on field reconnaissance, analysis of seismic records and an airborne LiDAR survey. We also present the results of a successful dynamic simulation for the July 24 event.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge contributions to this study made by Steve Israel (Yukon Geological Survey); Peter von Gaza (Pixel Mapper Geoscience); Doug Makkonen (Trans North Helicopters); Lance Goodwin, Andy Williams and Donjek Upton (Icefield Ranges Expeditions); Dr. John Barlow and the Canadian Consortium for LiDAR Environmental Applications Research (C-CLEAR) field crew; Lloyd Freese (Kluane National Park); Christian Zdanowicz (Geological Survey of Canada); Dr. Natalia Ruppert (Alaska Earthquake Information Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks); and Dr. Gerald Holdsworth (Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary). Stephen A. Wolfe provided a Geological Survey of Canada internal review. We also acknowledge the helpful reviews of Dr. Patrick Wassmer and an anonymous reviewer. We acknowledge Natural Resources Canada Earth Sciences Sector contribution number 20070457.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yukon Geological Survey, Government of Yukon, 2099 2nd Avenue, Whitehorse, Yukon, Y1A 2C6, Canada

    Panya S. Lipovsky

  2. Landslide Research Programme, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Stephen G. Evans, Keith B. Delaney & Nicholas J. Roberts

  3. Centre for Natural Hazard Research, Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada

    John J. Clague

  4. Applied Geomatics Research Group, Centre of Geographic Sciences, Nova Scotia Community College, 50 Elliott Rd, RR1, Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, B0S 1M0, Canada

    Chris Hopkinson

  5. Geological Survey of Canada (Landslides and Geotechnics), Natural Resources Canada, 601 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0E8, Canada

    Réjean Couture & Peter Bobrowsky

  6. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY, 10964, USA

    Göran Ekström

  7. Geological Survey of Canada (Glaciology), Natural Resources Canada, 601 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0E8, Canada

    Michael N. Demuth

  8. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, 6339 Stores Road, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Garry Clarke & Andrew Schaeffer

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  1. Panya S. Lipovsky
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  2. Stephen G. Evans
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  3. John J. Clague
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  4. Chris Hopkinson
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  5. Réjean Couture
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  6. Peter Bobrowsky
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  7. Göran Ekström
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  8. Michael N. Demuth
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  9. Keith B. Delaney
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  10. Nicholas J. Roberts
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Correspondence to Panya S. Lipovsky.

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Lipovsky, P.S., Evans, S.G., Clague, J.J. et al. The July 2007 rock and ice avalanches at Mount Steele, St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, Canada. Landslides 5, 445–455 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-008-0133-4

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