In spring 2007, a large rock avalanche descended onto the Morsárjökull valley glacier in southeast Iceland, leaving one fifth of the glacier buried. The insulating effect of the deposit on the ice was quickly observed as a difference in the ablation between the exposed ice and that under the deposit. After three melt seasons, the ice surface under the deposit was 29 m above the surrounding glac...

Sturzstroms are a rare category of rock avalanche that travel vast horizontal distances with only a comparatively small vertical drop in height. Their extraordinary mobility appears to be a consequence of sustained fluid-like behavior during motion, which persists even for driving stresses well below those normally associated with granular flows. One mechanism that may explain this temporary in...

Numerical modelling is a major challenge in the prevention of risks related to the occurrence of catastrophic phenomena. A Cellular Automata methodology was developed for modelling large scale (extended for kilometres) dangerous surface flows of different nature such as lava flows, pyroclastic flows, debris flows, rock avalanches, etc. This paper presents VALANCA, a first version of a Cellular ...

Iliamna is an andesitic stratovolcano of the Aleutian arc with regular gas and steam emissions and mantled by several large glaciers. Iliamna Volcano exhibits an unusual combination of frequent and large ice-rock avalanches in the order of 1×10 m to 3×10 m with recent return periods of 2–4 years. We have reconstructed an avalanche event record for the past 45 years that indicates Iliamna avalan...

This research programme at the Newton Institute was devoted to improving the understanding and mathematical modelling of granular and particle-laden fluid systems as they arise in nature, in the laboratory and in industry. Geophysical examples of granular and particle-laden flows include rock avalanches, debris flows, mud flows and turbulent boundary layers with suspended particles, such as vol...

In the framework of a better territory risk assessment and decision making, numerical simulation can provide a useful tool for investigating the propagation phase of phenomena involving granular material, like rock avalanches, when realistic geological contexts are considered. Among continuum mechanics models, the numerical model SHWCIN uses the depth averaged Saint Venant approach, in which th...