U.S. Geological Survey/NASA/UW News. The Landsat satellite image at left shows a huge lake on the Tsangpo River behind a dam created by a landslide (in red, lower right of the lake) in early 2000. The image at right shows the river following a catastrophic breach of the dam in June 2000.

In a new study in Nature Geosciences, ESS’ Isaac Larsen and David Montgomery show that once the angle of a mountain slope exceeds 30 degrees – whether from uplift, a rushing stream carving away the bottom of the slope or a combination of the two – landslide erosion increases significantly until the hillside stabilizes. Read more here.