LANDSLIDE (Syllabus: GS Paper 1 – Geography)
Context: As rescue efforts persist, the UN migration agency recently estimated that over 670 people may have perished in Papua New Guinea's extensive landslide.
Landslide
- Meaning: Landslides are natural disasters occurring mainly in mountainous terrains where there are conducive conditions of soil, rock, geology and slope.
o A sudden movement of rock, boulders, earth or debris down a slope is termed as a landslide.
- Factors behind landslide:
o Natural factors: Heavy rainfall, earthquakes, snow melting and undercutting of slopes due to flooding.
o Anthropogenic factors: Excavation, cutting of hills and trees, excessive infrastructure development, and overgrazing by cattle.
o Other factors: Lithology, geological structures like faults, hill slopes, drainage, geomorphology, land use and land cover, soil texture and depth, and weathering of rocks.
- Classification: Landslides are broadly classified based on:
o Type of materials involved: Rock, debris, soil, loose mud),
o Type of movement of the material: Fall, topple, slide, rotational slide or translational slide, and
o Type of flow of the material.
o Another category is of landslides that spread laterally.
- Impacts: Threat to human and animal lives, damaging property, roads and bridges, disrupting communication lines and snapping power lines etc.
Papua New Guinea
- Located: Situated in the southwestern Pacific and encompasses the eastern half of New Guinea, the world's second-largest island, along with numerous smaller offshore islands.
- Boundaries: It shares its borders with Indonesia to the west, Australia to the south, and the Solomon Islands to the southeast.
