Attabad landslide and Dave's Landslide Blog

Attabad landslide will likely be over topped today. NASA has a great image of the lake formed by the landslide in northern Pakistan and how the lake has grown over the past month and a half. The red areas are farm fields in this infrared image. Farming takes place on the alluvial fans and terraces along the sides of the valley. The white areas are snow and on the right portion of the image are two valley glaciers extending down to the edge of the farming area. In the upper left of the image the farm fields have been cut by the landslide. The people living there lost everything they owned when the slide took place in January.
When I'm in my office and not too pressed with report writing (like most of this week) I routinely check a few web pages as a means of self educating. One that has been a great service to my education is Dave Petley's Dave's Landslide Blog . He's been providing great updates on the Attabad Slide since the slide took place in January. Whenever I come across any interesting slides and do a little research on line his site inevitably comes up. He really has created a great community of landslide followers. A couple of weeks ago a geologist I know mentioned he had seen a comment I posted on Dave's blog. And folks from all over the world send him alerts about landslides that he then posts. Some of the slides are very humbling and given that I routinely am assessing geologic risk its a good thing to stay humble and think through all the possibilities.