Floods will 'wipe canyon off map'

A river gorge in Taiwan is set to disappear within 50 years, geologists have calculated.

Cut by the Daan River in just four years from 2004-2008, the gorge twists through soft rocks that were raised by a major 1999 earthquake.

It has already shrunk by 90m (295ft) and researchers say a newly identified mechanism, called downstream sweep erosion, is responsible.

The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, include time-lapse videos of the area, which captured some of the violent floods that are accelerating the erosion.

Footage courtesy of Dr Kristen Cook, GFZ (German Research Centre for Geosciences)