IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v57y2011i2p313-326.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unprecedented rates of landslide and surface erosion along a newly constructed road in Yunnan, China

Author

Listed:
  • Roy Sidle
  • Takahisa Furuichi
  • Yasuyuki Kono

Abstract

Field measurements conducted 4 years after the construction of a new portion of the Weixi–Shangri-La road in Yunnan, China, reveal that unprecedented rates of mass wasting occurred along the road with much of this sediment directly impacting the headwaters of the Mekong River. Landslide erosion (including dry ravel) exceeded 33,000 t ha −1 year −1 along the most severely eroded sections of the road and averaged more than 9,600 t ha −1 year −1 along the surveyed 23.5 km of road; these values are the highest ever reported for road-related landslides. While surface erosion was only about 7% of the total erosion from the road, it is still more than an order of magnitude higher than typical surface erosion rates from disturbed lands in Southeast Asia. Combined landslide and surface erosion from this road delivered an estimated 19 times more sediment to the river than the remaining 99.6% of the contributing catchment. These sediment inputs are aggrading local channels, promoting downstream sediment transport, degrading aquatic habitat, and creating the possibility for a future debris flood or hyperconcentrated flow. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Suggested Citation

  • Roy Sidle & Takahisa Furuichi & Yasuyuki Kono, 2011. "Unprecedented rates of landslide and surface erosion along a newly constructed road in Yunnan, China," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 57(2), pages 313-326, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:57:y:2011:i:2:p:313-326
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-010-9614-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-010-9614-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-010-9614-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krongkaew, Medhi, 2004. "The development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): real promise or false hope?," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 977-998, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roy C. Sidle, 2020. "Dark Clouds over the Silk Road: Challenges Facing Mountain Environments in Central Asia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-11, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Masami Ishida, 2019. "GMS Economic Corridors Under the Belt and Road Initiative," Journal of Asian Economic Integration, , vol. 1(2), pages 183-206, September.
    2. Thuzar, Moe & Mishra, Rahul & Hutchinson, Francis & Than, Tin Maung Maung & Chalermpalanupap, Termsak, 2014. "Connecting South and Southeast Asia: Implementation Challenges and Coordination," ADBI Working Papers 501, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    3. Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2013. "An international assessment of energy security performance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 148-158.
    4. Dannenberg Peter & Revilla Diez Javier & Schiller Daniel, 2018. "Spaces for integration or a divide? New-generation growth corridors and their integration in global value chains in the Global South," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 62(2), pages 135-151, May.
    5. Timotheus J. Krahl, 2014. "Book Review: Shrestha, Omkar Lal, and Aekapol Chongvilaivan (eds), Greater Mekong Subregion: From Geographical to Socio-economic Integration," Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 33(3), pages 167-171.
    6. Kornkarun Cheewatrakoolpong, 2009. "Towards a better understanding of the political economy of regional integration in the GMS: Stakeholder coordination and consultation for subregional trade facilitation in Thailand," Working Papers 7209, Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), an initiative of UNESCAP and IDRC, Canada..
    7. Gu, Xin & Wu, Xiangyi & Luo, Guangda, 2024. "Can power interconnection buffer economic policy uncertainty? Evidence from countries along the Belt and Road," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    8. Han Li & Yehua Dennis Wei & Kim Korinek, 2018. "Modelling urban expansion in the transitional Greater Mekong Region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(8), pages 1729-1748, June.
    9. Christopher Selvarajah, 2014. "Foreign aid imperatives in the Greater Mekong Subregion: case studies of Australian, Japanese and Thai Aid Coordination," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 21(1), pages 23-65, June.
    10. Yang, Muyi & Sharma, Deepak & Shi, Xunpeng & Mamaril, Kristy & Jiang, Han & Candlin, Alison, 2022. "Power connectivity in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) – The need for a wider discourse," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:57:y:2011:i:2:p:313-326. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.