Publications

Snowmelt and rainfall events triggered many landslides and debris flows in the Seattle, Washington, area during late December 1996 and January and March 1997. Landslides caused the deaths of at least four people, millions of dollars in damage to public and private property, lost revenues, traffic diversions, and other direct and indirect losses. Although shallow slides and debris flows...

No abstract available.

At approximately midday on April 27, 1993, a large landslide occurred along the foot of Bare Mountain in LaFayette, Onondaga County, New York, about 12 miles south of Syracuse (figs. 1, 2). The slide moved rapidly east toward the middle of the Tully Valley and impacted approximately 50 acres of land, destroyed three homes, and resulted in the evacuation of four other homes. Debris from...

Replicable, pronounced orientation of discoid pebbles (≥8 mm) embedded on surfaces of large (∼10 m3) experimental debris-flow deposits reveals that strongly aligned, imbricate fabric can develop rapidly over short distances in mass flows. Pebble long axes aligned subparallel to deposit margins as well as subparallel to margins of surge waves arrested within the deposits. Pebble alignment...

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Central California, in the vicinity of San Francisco and Monterey Bays, has a history of fatal and damaging landslides, triggered by heavy rainfall, coastal and stream erosion, construction activity, and earthquakes. The great 1906 San Francisco earthquake (MS=8.2-8.3) generated more than 10,000 landslides throughout an area of 32,000 km2; these landslides killed at least 11 people and...

In February 1995, a 1,600-foot stretch of popular beach at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore suddenly slid into the waters of northeastern Lake Michigan. The National Park Service (NPS) immediately requested the assistance of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in evaluating the hazard at the lakeshore. To protect the public, USGS and NPS scientists are conducting studies that will...

Two slow-moving landslides in Honolulu, Hawaii, were the subject of photogrammetric measurements, field mapping, and subsurface investigation to learn whether surface observations can yield useful information consistent with results of subsurface investigation. Mapping focused on structural damage and on surface features such as scarps, shears, and toes. The x-y-z positions of photo...

A 1:62,500-scale black-and-white map identifying some 2,000 landslides of various types in Santa Cruz County, California, has been converted to a digital-map database that can be acquired from the U.S. Geological Survey over the Internet or on magnetic tape.

The small rural town of La Honda, Calif., is an unincorporated region of San Mateo County situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the western part of the San Francisco peninsula. Much of the town is underlain by a previously recognized ancient landslide complex. The ancient slide complex covers about 1.0 to 1.25 km2, parts of which have been historically active. This report describes a...

No abstract available.