Natural dam failures: Past, present and future

The Earth’s landscapes tell a story of upheaval, shaped by colossal events of the past that hint of risks for our future. View our webinar recording here for an exploratory trip around the world (and beyond!) looking at the evidence left by megafloods:

The pdf of the accompanying presentation slides can be downloaded here:

Additional details about this August 2021 Australian Water School webinar are available here. Much of the webinar material is derived from the 2017 paper An Australian Perspective on Landslide Dam Failures: Historical Examples and Modelling Considerations by Krey Price.

Below are additional resources to supplement the presentation material, including natural dam failure examples from India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Australia:

Related webinars and video presentations

Chris Goodell presents additional details on the ice dam failures behind the Missoula Floods as part of this Full Momentum HEC-RAS vodcast. If you’d like to model dam breaches like these using free software, join Chris and Krey Price for their on-demand online dam breach modelling course.

Dr. Daryl Lam explains the concept of palaeoflood hydrology, which is often used to recreate flow hydrographs for natural dam failure events, in this July 2021 Australian Water School webinar, which also includes examples of interplanetary fluvial geomorphology:

CSIRO’s climatologists explain why extreme events are expected to intensity as a result of climate change in this March 2021 Australian Water School webinar:

Grady Hillhouse explains how pressurised groundwater erupted and formed canyons on Mars larger than any on earth:

Dr. Marty Teal, President of WEST Consultants, steps through the process of mobile boundary hydraulic modelling in this August 2019 Australian Water School webinar. Natural dam failures often involve a highly mobile bed with debris flow; join Dr. Teal in the AWS sediment transport modelling course to develop modelling skills including non-Newtonian flow, 2D numerical sediment transport modelling, and other tools that can aid in modelling natural dam failure events.

Stanford Gibson steps through new debris flow sediment transport capabilities in HEC-RAS 6.0 in this February 2021 Australian Water School webinar:

How do hydraulic forces move rock? This webinar explores the history and physics of “incipient motion”:

Dr. Arun Shrestha from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) discusses Himalayan GLOFs and the increasing risks posed by climate change in this 2019 Australian Water School webinar. Learn more about ICIMOD here.

Summary of GLOFs by Scientific American:

Articles, Publications, and Online Resources

Natural dam failure and extreme flood inventories

The Formation and Failure of Natural Dams, USGS 1991, which classifies 73 natural dams into categories, including a few like beaver dams that we didn’t mention in the webinar:

Volcanic dams (volcanic peaks, lava flows, and pyroclastic flows)
Landslide dams (rock, debris, slumps, slides, mud, earth, clay liquifaction, peakslides, and scree)
Glacial dams (Ice, moraine, snow)
Fluviatile dams (tributary sediment, channel sediment, alluvial fans, deltas, and levee deposits)
Eolian dams (sand dunes)
Coastal dams (Bay-bars)
Organic dams (logs, peat, and beaver dams)

Documented Historical Landslide Dams from Around the World, USGS 1987, a dBase IV compilation of 463 documented historical landslide dams around the world, including location, date, triggering mechanism, type, failure time, failure mechanism, breach dimensions, controls, materials, and references. Anyone up for putting this database into Google Earth?

World’s Largest Floods, Past and Present: Their Causes and Magnitudes, USGS 2004:

Quantitative Paleoflood Hydrology, USGS 2021:

Outburst Floods, USGS 2020
Covers all types of outburst floods, from the Missoula and Bonneville floods to more obscure floods dealing with molasses, beer, Pepsi fruit drink, and Martian crater spills!

Glacier-related Outburst Floods, USGS 2020 (Note the term GROF instead of GLOF):

India: Chamoli Flood

Understanding the Chamoli Flood: Cause, process, impacts, and context of rapid infrastructure development, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), 2021:

Solving the mystery behind India’s devastating flood, Business Insider article, June 2021:

New Zealand: Kaikoura Earthquake

GNS Science’s Earthquake-Induced Landscape Dynamics Page at www.slidenz.net:

Sketchfab 3D tour of the Hapuku landslide dam by GNS Science (click image below to browse in 3D – use full screen icon and select numbered features for further explanations):

Kaikoura Earthquake – Landslide dams: identifying the hazard and managing the risks, GNS, USGS, and GEER 2017:

Near real-time modelling of landslide impacts to inform rapid response: an example from the 2016 Kaikoura, New Zealand earthquake, University of Otago, University of Canterbury, and DHI, 2018:

Landslides caused by the Kaikoura Earthquake and the Immediate Response, GNS, University of Canterbury, UC Berkeley, etc. 2017 (32 authors in total…which must be some kind of record!)

Kaikoura earthquake landslide blog articles:

Europe

The Flims Rockslide in Switzerland:

Rhine Valley landslide dam failures:

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Nepal and Switzerland: New Threats Due to Climate Change:

United States

Lake Bonneville’s clues, a great article by High Country News about the evidence for Lake Bonneville

Mount St Helens Hydrography by the USGS, addressing lahar damming and the Spirit Lake bypass pipeline:

China

The 1786 earthquake-triggered landslide dam and subsequent dam-break flood on the Dadu River, southwestern China, Dai et. al, 2005:
View pdf version or online abstract with 100+ hyperlinked citations for other landslide dam events