Landslides in Kyrgyzstan captured by Sentinel-2

Sentinel-2 snow-ice

Simon Gascoin, 18 mai 2017

The giant Kurbu-Tash landslide in Kyrgyzstan occurred on 23-24 April 2017 and was highlighted by Dave Petley in the landslide blog of the American Geophysical Union.

Please read the erratum: https://www.cesbio.cnrs.fr/multitemp/?p=10566

The landslide can be seen in a Sentinel-2 image acquired 5 days after the event. I used a near-infrared composite to increase the contrast  between the vegetation and the bare soil.

I used this image to estimate that the length of the landslide is about 3.5 km [1]. The volume of the landslide was estimated to 2.8 million cubic meters by AKI press [2]. Local news reported there were no fatalities, but 5 days later, another landslide in Ayu village killed 24 people. I think that this landslide is also visible in the same Sentinel-2 imagery although it is less evident.

[1] Half of the length of the massive Glacier Bay landslide!

[2] This is still 20 times less than the first Aru glacier avalanche.

Plus d'actualités

Three Sentinel-2 satellites instead of two: impact on the retrieval of the snow disappearance date

Due to the success of Olivier’s petition, ESA kept Sentinel-2A operational after the launch of Sentinel-2C. Having three operational satellites instead of two increases the revisit, which should improve the quality of the derived products, and therefore the reliability of operational services based on Sentinel-2 data. One of this service is the Copernicus’ High Resolution […]

Autumn snow drought on Mount Damavand

« We are currently experiencing the driest autumn the country has experienced in 50 years » said Iran’s meteorological organisation. Near Tehran, Mount Damavand, the highest peak in Iran (5609 m) was reported to be « unusually bare of snow ». I checked this statement using my MODIS snow cover data processing algorithm implemented in Google Earth Engine (Gascoin […]

Evolution des glaciers du Vignemale sous l’œil des satellites Pléiades (2013-2025)

Grâce à DINAMIS, un couple d’images stéréoscopiques a été acquis par Pléiades 1B le 14 septembre 2025. Le modèle numérique de surface (MNS) produit à partir de ces images peut être comparé à un autre MNS de septembre 2013 produit à partir des images Pléiades 1A commandées par Marti et al. (2014). Le glacier d’Ossoue […]

Rechercher