Sentences with word «rockfall»

When it thaws, the ground becomes less stable, erosion can start and the chance of rockfall increases.

Although the new study doesn't help researchers predict rockfalls in any meaningful way, it does help geologists understand how such events can be triggered — and possibly makes rock climbers a little more nervous the next time they're hanging off a cliff on a warm sunny day.

Fortunately, the area's roads and trails had been closed earlier, the park rangers forewarned by seeing a series of smaller rockfalls — and hearing loud cracking noises — coming from the cliff face.

Daily swings in temperature can aggravate the same sorts of stresses in layered sandstones, he says, driving cracking — and thus possibly triggering rockfalls — within those types of rocks as well.

Sometimeschange can be more sudden, like rockfalls causing damage, earthquakes changing a landform, volcanoes spewing out lava tocreate new landforms and so on.

That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers,» Apa told the AFP, via PhysOrg.

That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers,» he recently told AFP News in an interview.

A rare rockfall immediately south of a scenic overlook in Palisades Interstate Park changed the face of the formation dramatically and closed a popular hiking trail indefinitely.

Since rockfalls and landslides dare to obstruct Switzerland's famously well - run rail system, these studies go well beyond the laboratory.

Dozens of such rockfalls occur every year, from Brazil to Japan, yet what causes many of them has remained a mystery.

But pockets of pikas are bucking that trend by living stably in shady talus slopes, the accumulated rockfall debris at the base of mountains.

Two smaller rockfalls completely sealed that entrance sometime between 21,500 and 23,500 years ago — one big reason the cave's art survived unsullied until the trove was discovered by three spelunkers in 1994.

Each period ended around the same time as a massive rockfall, the most recent of which partially blocked the cavern's entrance.

The scientists developed an algorithm to distinguish rockfalls from other sources of seismic noise, like rainstorms, avalanches, and earthquakes.

The study ran over two winters, when rockfalls in Yosemite are the most frequent.

The possibility of picking up on similar early warnings has made the monitoring of rockfall patterns an important activity, but useful data is lost each time a fall goes unobserved.

The team set up seismic stations — with geophones and accelerometers to detect ground movement and acceleration, along with infrasound sensors — within 1 kilometer of an active rockfall zone in Yosemite Valley, where the 1000 - meter - high cliffs experience an average of 40 to 70 falls per year (see example, pictured).

According to one eyewitness, watching Yosemite Valley's largest rockfall was like seeing a cliff «unfolding like the stairs of an escalator.»

Cracking driven by daily and seasonal temperature changes may help explain substantial fraction of sunny - day rockfalls

Mars scientists also revealed MGS images of a recent rockfall, in which many boulders broke free and rolled down a crater wall sometime between November 2003 and December 2004.

In heaves and hollows and scallops, crag above crag, upland beyond upland: in murky shouldering ridges, clotted with trees, tumbling with rockfalls, the flanks of Troll Fell rose before him.

Gusts of wind can come out of the blue in Iceland, there are often rockfalls and small earthquakes... I wouldn't recommend sitting on a ledge with meters of nothing underneath you.....

These unstable deposits are called talus or scree, and may be subject to frequent rockfalls and landslides.

«It was a bedrock landslide that had a characteristically fast and long runout — much longer than we would see for smaller rockfalls and rockslides,» Moore says.

California's Yosemite National Park is a hot spot of rockfalls.

«There may be a rockfall and a rappel or two that lie between us and the cold beer and high fives in the tavern.

A video showing the aftermath of a rockfall in South - Tyrol remembers us that even small mass movements can have disastrous — or even deadly — effects.

About 15 % of Yosemite's rockfalls that either don't have a clear cause or can be linked to thermal stresses occur during the hottest months of the year (July through September) or at the warmest time of day (from noon through 6 p.m. local time).

Nevertheless, over time the fissure grows to the point at which the bulging on a hot summer day can fracture a slab free of its cliff, triggering a rockfall.

Erosion and perhaps earthquakes have cracked the thin, rocky roof of the caves, resulting in several meters of rockfall and jumbled archaeological deposits.

Writing in Engineering Geology, the researchers report that the sensors were able to pinpoint small rockfalls (of less than 20 cubic meters) at distances of up to several hundred meters away — and identify not only individual impacts within falls, but also, in some cases, the signals generated as the rocks began to move.

In total, the team detected 12 rockfalls, with six being related and forming part of a larger, ongoing instability in the cliff face.

Laser scanners provide detailed damage assessments of a home hit by a rockfall during the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake.

Avalanches, rockfalls or earthquakes can breach these dams, or cause water to overflow them, resulting in catastrophic floods known as glacial lake outburst floods.

Putting all these clues together, Evenson was able to pinpoint the source of the rockfall to one of three locations, the most likely of which was beside a tributary called the Parry Glacier, 200 kilometres from the boulders» present locations.

If the rockfall was caused by seismic activity, such as a marsquake, it could support views that Martian tectonics and volcanism are still active at the planet, Mustard added.

Then there is the fact that rape is not a naturally occurring event like a rockfall, or a transformative one like a radioactive spider bite.

Over recent years, rockfalls have become increasingly frequent.

«There is likely to be an increase in rockfalls and landslides» at high - altitude sites, Harris said.

precarious: rockfalls, earthquakes and avalanches can breach them or tip water from them to create a dangerous downstream flow.

All such lakes are precarious: rockfalls, earthquakes and avalanches can breach them or tip water from them to create a dangerous downstream flow.