Field photographs of landslides triggered by the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye earthquake sequence

This dataset contains 212 geotagged photographs documenting landslides and other ground failure triggered by the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye earthquake sequence. The photographs were primarily taken by USGS scientists during field reconnaissance conducted with Turkish colleagues from 10-20 June 2023. The primary objective of the reconnaissance was to identify and investigate possible locations of continued threats (e.g. landslide dams, deep-seated landslides) and to validate remote sensing observations by visiting sites on the ground. The photographs in this dataset are a subset of the highest quality photos selected to represent the wide variety of landslide styles and types that were triggered by this earthquake sequence. The earthquake sequence started on 6 February 2023 at 1:17:34 UTC with the M 7.8 Pazarcık earthquake followed about 9 hours later with the M 7.5 Elbistan earthquake.

The June 2023 field reconnaissance team collected observations in select steep areas that span the length of the surface rupture of the M 7.8 earthquake. Many locations were unvisited on this trip due to the vast areas involved and access difficulties. The rupture zone of the second M 7.5 earthquake was not visited on this trip, though the ground shaking from that event may have contributed to triggering of some of the observed landslides. Heavy precipitation in the northeastern portion of the earthquake-affected area in March 2023 remobilized coseismic debris into large debris flows, the deposits and consequences of which are included in this photo collection. The March rainfall event may have also triggered additional movement of earthquake triggered landslides that is captured in the field photos.

This data release is accompanied by an interactive photo viewing application.

The data release contains a zip file of the photograph files (jpg format) with embedded metadata in each file including photographer name, captions, keywords, geolocations, and photo capture time (Turkiye_Syria_landslide_photos.zip). Key metadata extracted from these photos, including the latitude and longitude of the photographer and photo description/caption is included (Turkiye_Syria_landslide_photometadata.csv).

This work was funded by the USGS Earthquake Disaster Assistance Team.