State of the Art in Debris-Flow Research: The Role of Dendrochronology

Abstract

Debris flows and their volcanic counterparts lahars are one of the most destructive mass movement process worldwide, being responsible for hundreds of death every year and leading to horrific multi-thousand death tolls every decade or so. Consequently, debris flows have been the focus on intensive research with hundreds of papers appearing annually on various aspects of debris flow research. For most researchers and practitioners it is difficult to keep abreast of all advances in debris flow research and to extract the most relevant publications. Several dedicated conferences have been held whose sole focus is debris flows. In 2005 a book on debris flows and related processes was published (Jakob and Hungr 2005) to offer a more systematic review of the state-of-the-art. The book was published in 2005 and thus reflects mostly knowledge up to 2003 or 2004. With that it is outdated in some fields. It is clearly impossible to replace the 2005 book and provide a comprehensive review of all significant advances in debris flow science in the space of this chapter. The author has therefore attempted to provide a short summary and highlight outstanding questions and how they can be addressed, at least in part, by application of dendrochronology.