Slumping is an especially serious geohazard where structures are built on bluffs above the shoreline. Wave energy erodes the bases of the cliffs, causing them to fail. In many cases, homes built along the bluffs are lost and the scarp progresses landward, posing a geohazard for the next line of houses on the bluff. Flows Flows are mass movements in which the material behaves like a viscous fluid. In many cases, mass movements that start as falls, slides, or slumps are transformed into flows further downslope.
Flows have broad characteristics.
They encompass the wettest, driest, slowest, and fastest types of mass movement. There are six kinds of Flows. They are discussed in order from the slowest to the fastest. Depending on where you live, you may have observed a downslope displaement of trees, fences, or utility poles. This slow displacement is the result of creep, an extremely slow movement of regolith, soil, and rock under the influence of gravity.