A lake created by a landslide in northwest
Pakistan continued growing throughout the month of May 2010. The lake extended
northward up the Hunza River, past the settlements of Gulmit and Shishkot.
Meanwhile, the risk of a breach continued growing, according to David Petley
of the International Landslide Centre in the United Kingdom. On June 1,
2010, Petley warned that the landslide lake was eroding the landslide mass
instead of the excavated material, and that downstream communities should
prepare for a rapid breach.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission
and Reflection Radiometer(ASTER) on
the Terra satellite
acquired this false-color image of the landslide lake on June 1, 2010.
Water appears in varying shades of blue. Vegetation is red. Bare rock appears
in shades of brown and gray.
This image has been rotated, so north appears
at right The Hunza River flows toward the south, and water backed up behind
the landslide has slowly spread toward the north. Colored lines show the
lake's earlier extents: gray (March 16), burnt orange (May 2), and yellow
(May 25). This image shows that, by June 1, the landslide lake had extended
2 to 3 kilometers north of its May 25 extent.