ABSTRACT
Instability and failure of hillslopes mantled with blanket peat occurs naturally in cool temperate regions that favour the development of blanket bogs. Such peat failures are most common in the UK and Ireland, where they pose potential hazards to properties and infrastructure. This chapter identifies an urgent need for new approaches to the assessment of blanket peat stability, and examines some of the principal issues identified during research that need to be addressed including validation or modification of existing methods of quantitative stability analyses for use with peat. It highlights the problems of assessing and analysing the stability of hillslopes mantled with blanket peat. Investigations of twelve separate peat landslides at seven locations in northern and western Ireland have generated a set of data that describe the index properties and some geotechnical properties of the failed blanket bogs.
