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Preliminary Engineering Geological Characterization of the ca. 20 km³ Dangkhar Landslide in the Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India

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Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 2

Abstract

The Spiti Valley located in northern India hosts the newly recognized Dangkhar landslide. It is one of the five largest continental landslides on earth, covering an area of approximately 40 km2 with an estimated volume of 17–20 km3. The landslide occurred in a remote high mountain desert within the Tethys Himalaya, at elevations between 3,400–5,600 m, and provides an exceptional opportunity to study the landslide structure, mechanism, chronology and deformation rates. Preliminary findings suggest that major parts of the slide mass have moved in a slow and coherent manner during the Holocene. Geochronologic studies are presently being performed to constrain the onset of landslide activity and its behavior over time.

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Correspondence to Markus Kaspar .

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Kaspar, M., Kieffer, D.S. (2015). Preliminary Engineering Geological Characterization of the ca. 20 km³ Dangkhar Landslide in the Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India. In: Lollino, G., et al. Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09057-3_153

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