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Soil creep: problems raised by a 23 year study in Australia

✍ Scribed by Clarke, M. F.; Williams, M. A. J.; Stokes, T.


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
317 KB
Volume
24
Category
Article
ISSN
0360-1269

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✦ Synopsis


In October 1965 and February 1966, 55 Young-pits were installed in tropical Northern Territory (NT) and temperate New South Wales (NSW). Pits were monitored in 1968, 1971 and 1974; also, for the NT only, in 1988. In each region, half of the pits are on weathered granite, and half on sandstone. Local relief is 30m or less, and slopes are up to 208. Annual rainfall is evenly distributed in the NSW sites (800mm a ±1 ), but is confined to the five to six month wet season in NT (1200mm a ±1 ). Six pits suffered external disturbance and so were not analysed. Analysis of 160 rods in 49 undisturbed pits shows: (1) vectorial movement generally not downslope parallel to the ground surface, but dominated by a vertically downward component; (2) significant uphill and vertically upward components of movement for many rods; (3) a weak correlation between total movement and sine of slope; (4) rapid movement during 1965±68, and slow movement thereafter; (5) significantly higher creep rates on the NT granites than on all other sites, perhaps because mound-building termites are especially active there. We conclude that our data do not support soil creep models which assume that all movement is downslope and slope-parallel. Repeated long-term measurements are essential to distinguish long-term creep rates from the short-term effects of disturbance.