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Mass wasting, also known as mass movement, [1] is a general term for the movement of rock or soil down slopes under the force of gravity. It differs from other processes of erosion in that the debris transported by mass wasting is not entrained in a moving medium, such as water, wind, or ice.
Both types of flow are generally mixtures of particles with a wide range of sizes, which typically become sorted by size upon deposition. [3] Mudflows are often called mudslips, a term applied indiscriminately by the mass media to a variety of mass wasting events. [4]
It is an intermediate type of mass wasting that is between downhill creep and mudflow. The types of materials that are susceptible to earthflows are clay, fine sand and silt, and fine-grained pyroclastic material. [1] When the ground materials become saturated with enough water, they will start flowing (soil liquefaction). Its speed can range ...
Mass wasting or mass movement is the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface, mainly due to the force of gravity. [49] [50] Mass wasting is an important part of the erosional process and is often the first stage in the breakdown and transport of weathered materials in mountainous areas.
There have been known various classifications of landslides.Broad definitions include forms of mass movement that narrower definitions exclude. For example, the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology distinguishes the following types of landslides:
The term landslide refers to a variety of mass wasting events (geologic slope failures) that include slumps, slides, falls, and flows.The two major types of slides are rotational slides and translational slides. [3]
A lahar travels down a river valley in Guatemala near the Santa Maria volcano, 1989. A lahar (/ ˈ l ɑː h ɑːr /, from Javanese: ꦮ꧀ꦭꦲꦂ) is a violent type of mudflow or debris flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material, rocky debris and water.
Favourable geology and climate are the principal causal mechanisms of rockfall, factors that include intact condition of the rock mass, discontinuities within the rockmass, weathering susceptibility, ground and surface water, freeze-thaw, root-wedging, and external stresses. A tree may be blown by the wind, and this causes a pressure at the ...