The group of international scientists analyzed the flow of particles circulating in the Ming River in central China, where in 2008, the earthquake in Wenchuan had a size of 7.9. It turned out that the river still carried a series of debris swept away from the mountainside. After the earthquake, the rate of bottom sediment increased by 20 times and did not return to normal even after 10 years. The idea of changing the new data on the time of seismic disaster consequences. The research was published in Nature magazine.
On May 12, 2008, the earthquake in Wenchuan was 7.9 in central China. The result of a natural disaster, more than 69 thousand people died. Nearly one-third of them may die due to the geological disaster of 60,000 landslides destroyed the mountains of the Lunman mountain range. Rocks and soil plun into streams and rivers, including Ming River, the main water artery of the area.
Now, the group of international scientists has decided to find out what happened to the debris of the landslide after the earthquake. The old case helped them in this: In 2006, two years ago the disaster, 20 km downstream from the Zhen Chan, the electricity company completed the construction of Tsipinpu dams. The reservoir has become a natural trap for soil sediments. For more than ten years, scientists hit its bottom by using hydrocarpatcher and calculating the flow of suspended particles.
Therefore, the researchers found that after the earthquake, the overall sedimentary line increased 6 times and the bottom – 20 times. This means that after the earthquake in the bottom layer, about 65% of the total sediments into the river; In normal years, the bottom layer is about 20%. According to the authors, even a decade later, the flow was still high. It is estimated that during this time, the river lost only 10% of the mass of pieces formed in 2008.
In fact, the evaluation by data we have collected at this time, there is no evidence that the total rainfall is reduced to the background, Josh West, the fake copper of the study from the University of Southern California, USA.
New data will help better understand the consequences of strong earthquakes and develop solutions to protect the population from them. In the future, the authors plan to research the composition of the landslide and find out why the water level in the Min river increases after the disaster – unlike the earthquake in other areas, for example, in Nepal in 2015.