to download report - Geological Survey of Ireland

8.4 Research. Post-2003 AbstractsTable 8.2 lists the researchers who have recently, or who are currently working on Irish landslides. Abstractssubmitted by the different project leaders are then included in their entirety.Research onLandslides inIreland (Post 2003)College Department Researcher/student Qualification TopicLandslide DatabaseNUIG (GSI) Geography-GIS Christine Colgan MSc. GIS developmentusing GIS & WebUniv of Huddersfield Geography Alan Dykes Joint Project -Univ of Durham Jeff Warburton Pollatomish peat slidesSligo IT Environment Steve Torney Msc. Envl HealthLimerick ITQuantity Surv.Daragh McDonagh (Tobin Bsc ConstructionEng.)EcnomicsIncorporate Risk ofLandslidesinto the Irish PlanningProcessLandslides. A problem forthe future?Cainozoic evolution of theE. Rockall Slope SystemUCD Geology Gavin Elliott PhD.(Incl. Landslide evidenceoffshore from Nat. SeabedSurvey data)UCD (Irish Rail) Civil Eng. Ken Gavin MSc. Assessing the effects ofrainfall on the stability ofman made slopes in glacialtillUCD Civil Eng. Mike Long/ Noel Boylan PhD.A system for Peat stabilityanalyses?Leeds Univ. Geophysics Shane Murphy MSc Geophysics Geophysical investigationof peat failuresTCD Civil Engineering Dr Eric Farrell Geotechnical PropertiesTable 8.2 Table of ResearchersThe Landslides on Dooncarton Mountain, Co. Mayo, 19 September 2003Alan Dykes and Jeff WarburtonCatastrophic failures of peat deposits and peat-covered hillslopes have occurred in many parts of the world.Approximately 60% of all recorded peat failures are in Ireland (the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland),with a further 20% in the rest of the UK (Dykes and Kirk, in press). The serious impacts of these events werewell known by the end of the 19th century, particularly following the disaster in Co. Kerry in 1896 that killed afamily of eight people and involved 5-6 million m 3 of peat (Sollas et al., 1897; Cole, 1897; Latimer, 1897). Thelandslides on Dooncarton Mountain, although of a much smaller scale and involving blanket bog rather thanraised bog peat, constituted an event similar to others in recent years, e.g. July 1983 in southern Scotland (>41 landslides and peat slides caused by > 65 mm of rainfall within 1¼ hours: Acreman, 1991) and on the sameday as Dooncarton, 19 September 2003, in Shetland, northern Scotland (20 large peat slides caused by c.100mm of rainfall within 3 hours).The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded a research project to investigate in detail howand why so many landslides were triggered by the rainfall on Dooncarton Mountain in 2003, and what happenedto the sediment generated from the landslides. The latter issue constitutes the main hazard from these slopefailures, but has not previously been explicitly studied in this context in Ireland or the UK. However, understandingthe factors that determine the susceptibility of (peat-covered) mountain slopes to failure in response to ‘extreme’rainfall is the first critical stage of any assessment of the possible hazard from similar events in the future. Thisis becoming increasingly important given the consistent climate change predictions that emphasise theincreasing frequency of severe high intensity rainstorms.81