Although peat slope failures have occurred in Ireland for many thousands of years their causalfactors and the triggering mechanisms involved are poorly understood. A particular barrier toquantitative assessment of the risk of failures is the lack of knowledge of the geotechnicalproperties of peat and its role in failures. In order to advance the understanding of these issuescase history data is invaluable. This paper describes a case study from the Wicklowmountains where a desk and remote sensing based study was used to identify peat slopefailures. Subsequently detailed field studies were carried out at two failure locations. It wasfound that although the full causal factors at the time of failure are unknown, a commonfactor was that the failure took place in a zone of highly decomposed and relatively low fibrecontent peat. A revision of the standard test method for fibre content for use in peat soils isproposed.
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