The 17 March 2005 Kuzulu landslide (Sivas, Turkey) and landslide-susceptibility map of its near vicinity

Landslides are common natural hazards in the seismically active North Anatolian Fault Zone of Turkey. Although seismic activity, heavy rainfall, channel incisions, and anthropogenic effects are commonly the main triggers of landslides, on March 17, 2005, a catastrophic large landslide in Sivas, northeastern of Turkey, the Kuzulu landslide, was triggered by snowmelt without any other precursor. The initial failure of the Kuzulu landslide was rotational. Following the rotational failure, the earth material in the zone of accumulation exhibited an extremely rapid flow caused by steep gradient and high water content. The Agnus Creek valley, where Kuzulu village is located, was filled by the earth-flow material and a landslide dam was formed on the upper part of Agnus Creek. The distance from the toe of the rotational failure down to the toe of the earth flow measured more than 1800 m, with about 12.5 million m³ of displaced earth material. The velocity of the Kuzulu landslide was extremely fast, approximately 6 m/s. The main purposes of this study are to describe the mechanism and the factors conditioning the Kuzulu landslide, to present its environmental impacts, and to produce landslide-susceptibility maps of the Kuzulu landslide area and its near vicinity. For this purpose, a detailed landslide inventory map was prepared and geology, slope, aspect, elevation, topographic-wetness index and stream-power index were considered as conditioning factors. During the susceptibility analyses, the conditional probability approach was used and a landslide-susceptibility map was produced. The landslide-susceptibility map will help decision makers in site selection and the site-planning process. The map may also be accepted as a basis for landslide risk-management studies to be applied in the study area.     

Accuracy analysis, dem generation and validation using russian tk-350 stereo-images

TK-350 stereo-scenes of the Zonguldak testfield in the north-west of Turkey have been analysed. The imagery had a base-to-height ratio of 0·52 and covered an area of 200 km × 300 km, with each pixel representing 10 m on the ground. Control points digitised from 1:25 000 scale topographic maps were used in the test. A bundle orientation was executed using the University of Hanover program BLUH and PCI Geomatica OrthoEngine AE software packages. Tests revealed that TK-350 stereo-images can yield 3D geopositioning to an accuracy of about 10 m in planimetry and 17 m in height. A 40 m resolution digital elevation model (DEM) was generated by the PCI system and compared against a reference DEM, which was derived from digitised contour lines provided by 1:25 000 scale topographic maps. This comparison showed that accuracy depends mainly on the surface structure and the slope of the local terrain. Root mean square errors in height were found to be about 27 and 39 m outside and inside forested areas, respectively. The matched DEM demonstrated a systematic shift against the reference DEM visible as an asymmetric shift in the frequency distribution. This is perhaps caused by the presence of vegetation and buildings.     

Risk identification and perception in the fisheries sector: Comparisons between the Faroes,Greece, Iceland and UK

This paper presents the findings of risk identification and risk perception research conducted in relation to the fisheries systems of four distinct and diverse European countries: Faroes, Iceland, Greece and the UK. Risk research traditionally attempts to quantify the potential threat or consequences from a range of risk events or hazards. This research, however, adopted a social sciences perspective and so assumed that a risk event or hazard can mean different things to different people and that these perceptions are also context and culturally dependent. Risk perceptions were examined and risk registers developed in each country for a range of stakeholder groups. A ‘mental modelling’ approach was adopted in a series of qualitative interviews. Findings were examined in terms of a wide range of psychological, social and cultural risk theories. Differences in risk perceptions were noted between stakeholder groups and countries and contextual influences were examined such as the widely differing fisheries management systems used in each country. This research provides one of the first attempts to systematically evaluate risks and perceptions across a range of fisheries-systems. The findings support social science theories which argue that risk is a subjective, as opposed to objective, concept and that this subjectivity will therefore affect our attempts to assess and manage those hazards we think we can potentially influence or control.     

Phase-space reconstruction and self-exciting threshold modeling approach to forecast lake water levels

Lake water level forecasting is very important for an accurate and reliable management of local and regional water resources. In the present study two nonlinear approaches, namely phase-space reconstruction and self-exciting threshold autoregressive model (SETAR) were compared for lake water level forecasting. The modeling approaches were applied to high-quality lake water level time series of the three largest lakes in Sweden; Vänern, Vättern, and Mälaren. Phase-space reconstruction was applied by the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) model. The k-NN model parameters were determined using autocorrelation, mutual information functions, and correlation integral. Jointly, these methods indicated chaotic behavior for all lake water levels. The correlation dimension found for the three lakes was 3.37, 3.97, and 4.44 for Vänern, Vättern, and Mälaren, respectively. As a comparison, the best SETAR models were selected using the Akaike Information Criterion. The best SETAR models in this respect were (10,4), (5,8), and (7,9) for Vänern, Vättern, and Mälaren, respectively. Both model approaches were evaluated with various performance criteria. Results showed that both modeling approaches are efficient in predicting lake water levels but the phase-space reconstruction (k-NN) is superior to the SETAR model.     

Splash detachment of sand particles under varying contact stress field of wind-driven raindrop impact

The effects of wind-driven rain (WDR) on sand detachment were studied under various raindrop obliquities. Results suggested a significant reduction in compressive stress on sand surfaces for a two-dimensional experimental set-up in a wind tunnel. During experiments, sand particles in splash cups were exposed to both wind-free rain (WFR) and WDR driven by horizontal winds of 6.4, 8.9 and 12.8 m s⁻¹ and rainfall intensities of 50, 60, 75 and 90-mm h⁻¹ to assess the sand detachment rate (D, in g m⁻² s⁻¹). The effects of sand moisture state (dry and wet) on the detachment of different-sized particles (0.20–0.50 and 0.50–2.00 mm, respectively) were also tested. Factorial analysis of variance showed that shear and compressive stress components evaluated by horizontal and vertical kinetic energy flux terms (KE_x and KE_y, respectively, in J m⁻² s⁻¹) along with their vector sum (KE_r, in J m⁻² s⁻¹) explained the variation in D. Neither sand size nor sand moisture was statistically significant alone although binary interactions of KE_r, KE_x and KE_y with the sand size and three-way interaction of KE_x, sand size and moisture were statistically significant. These results can be explained by size-dependent variation in sand compressibility and surface friction related to the total stress field developed by a given partition of shear and compressive stresses of wind-driven oblique raindrops (KE_x/KE_y). Further analysis of the variation of the unit sand detachment rate (D_u = D/KE_r = g J⁻¹) with rain inclination (α, in degrees) better revealed the effect of WDR obliquity on D_u that further changed with sand size class and moisture state. Finally, the difference in the resulting stress field differentiable by the oblique raindrop trajectories of the experiment over sand surface significantly affected the non-cohesive particle detachment rates, to some extent interacted with size-dependent compressibility and interface shear strength of sand grains.     

The effect of discontinuity frequency on ground vibrations produced from bench blasting: A case study

A good number of empirical formulae and methods dealing with the analysis of the effects of blast-induced ground vibrations have been developed. The most common approach suggested for estimating the attenuation of particle velocity on the ground is to scale the distance (scaled distance, SD). This approach makes it possible to estimate the peak particle velocity when the amount of explosive charge or the distance or both are altered.Many parameters known to have an influence on particle velocity have been used for particle velocity prediction equations. Some of these parameters are maximum charge per delay, the distance between the station and shot location, burden, inelastic attenuation factor and site factors. However, the impacts of the discontinuities existing on the benches where blasts are detonated on the propagation velocity of seismic waves have not been taken into consideration in these equations.This study aims to examine the impacts of the discontinuity frequency parameter derived through geological measurements carried out on the blasting benches or nearby in a quarry mine (Supren, Eskisehir) in Turkey on the propagation of blast-induced ground vibrations. Developed based on the geological observations carried out on the benches, the model was formed by adding discontinuity frequency parameter to the particle velocity prediction model suggested by Nicholls et al. [Nicholls HR, Johnson CF, Duvall WI. Blasting vibrations and their effects on structures. Bulletin no. 656. Washington, DC: US Bureau of Mines; 1971]. In order to research the effect of the discontinuity frequency in the bench on the blast-induced ground vibrations, the relationship between the recorded peak particle velocity, scaled distance and discontinuity frequency was statistically evaluated for the site. The established relationship and the results of the study are presented.     

Application of Markovian models for non-ergodic and non-stationary earthquake times series for the identification of seismic patterns and future projections*

The current earthquake forecast algorithms are not free of shortcomings due to inherent limitations. Especially, the requirement of stationarity in the evaluation of earthquake time series as a prerequisite, significantly limits the use of forecast algorithms to areas where stationary data is not available. Another shortcoming of forecast algorithms is the ergodicity assumption, which states that certain characteristics of seismicity are spatially invariant. In this study, a new earthquake forecast approach is introduced for the locations where stationary data are not available. For this purpose, the spatial activity rate density for each spatial unit is evaluated as a parameter of a Markov chain. The temporal pattern is identified by setting the states at certain spatial activity rate densities. By using the transition patterns between the states, 1- and 5-year forecasts were computed. The method is suggested as an alternative and complementary to the existing methods by proposing a solution to the issues of ergodicity and stationarity assumptions at the same time.     

Buildings Damages after Elazığ, Turkey Earthquake on January 24, 2020

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred on January 24, 2020, has been effective in Turkey’s eastern regions. The earthquake, with recorded peak ground acceleration (PGA) value of 0.292 g, caused the destruction or heavy damage of buildings, especially in the city center of Elaz?? province. The purpose of this paper was to share the results of detailed investigation in the earthquake-stricken area. Additionally, the causes of damages and failures observed in the buildings were compared to those that had occurred in previous earthquakes in Turkey. In this study, the damages observed in especially RC buildings as well as in masonry and rural buildings were summarized, the lessons learned were evaluated, and the results were interpreted with reference to Turkish earthquake codes. In the study, it was particularly emphasized why the building stock underwent such damage even though the buildings were exposed to earthquake acceleration well below the design acceleration values.

     

Hydrographic data modeling methods for determining precise seafloor topography

Acoustic and light detection and ranging are the recent methods used in hydrographical surveying. Depth values depending on X and Y horizontal coordinates are measured in both methods. While processing the hydrographical data, all data with different density are interpolated and modeled for determining the seafloor model using different interpolation techniques. In this study, effects of different surface modeling methods are investigated. Data obtained from single-beam echo sounder (SBES) are modeled using inverse distance, kriging, local polynomial, minimum curvature, moving average, nearest-neighbor, and Delaunay interpolation methods. Interpolation results are compared with the multibeam echo sounder data which were collected on the same area for determining the accuracy of modeling methods. Depending on the maximum total vertical uncertainty values in hydrographic survey standards, the best results were determined by using the kriging method. The Delaunay, minimum curvature, and inverse distance methods can be used for modeling the SBES data in shallow waters.