Mass Wasting Finland

 Unlike its neighbors Finland has primarily flat lands with lots of lakes. There are rolling hills and a few mountains in the north but the highest altitude being a modest 1,328m. Due to the lack of sloped land it is not common to see many landslides in the country. However Finland does have 'Quick Clay' which "is a fine-grained sediment where the grain structure may collapse even if the sediment is initially quite firm." 

Quick Clay can quickly turn into a hazard and move whole sides of mountains if it ends up liquifying. And due to the artic starting to melt they estimate that there will be an increased number of landslides in the future due to the excess liquid water now in the area. The Nordic countries will begin to see an increase in the natural disaster even Finland with its rolling hills. Quick Clay is especially dangerous because it is easily disturbed, it can be overloaded, too much rainfall, erosion, slope undercutting, and so much more.  This make the Quick Clay an unpredictable danger.

Finland can try and prepare for this by educating its people about this being a potential new risk in the area as well as trying to make sure they know where their Quick Clay is located and try to limit new building in that area.

Sources: https://www.ngu.no/en/topic/quick-clay-and-quick-clay-landslides

                https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200928125042.htm

                https://www.geoengineer.org/news/massive-landslide-sweeps-away-houses-in-norway

                https://wikitravel.org/en/Finland


Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 19, 2021 at 8:12 PM

    Hi Brittany,
    It was interesting to learn that Finland has a lot of flat land and landslides are not common, but they can be in the future due to the quick clay and the melting snow from the artic. My country is France and unlike Finland that has flat lands, France has mountainous regions such as the Alps. So not only do they have landslides they also have avalanches.

    ReplyDelete

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