Publications

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data were used to visually map landslides, headscarps, and denuded slopes in Seattle, Washington. Four times more landslides were mapped than by previous efforts that used aerial photographs. The mapped landforms (landslides, headscarps, and denuded slopes) were created by many individual landslides. The spatial distribution of mapped landforms and...

Damaging landslides in the Appalachian Plateau and scattered regions within the Midcontinent of North America highlight the need for landslide-hazard mapping and a better understanding of the geomorphic development of landslide terrains. The Plateau and Midcontinent have the necessary ingredients for landslides including sufficient relief, steep slope gradients, Pennsylvanian and Permian

In the first half of the 20th century, engineering geology and geotechnical engineering were in their infancy, and dams were often built where landslides provided valley constrictions, often without expert site investigation. Only the most important projects were subjected to careful geologic examination. Thus, dams were often built without complete understanding of the possible...

No abstract available.

This Workshop has its origins in the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) for Yucca Mountain, the designated site of the underground repository for the nation's high-level radioactive waste. In 1998 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Senior Seismic Hazard Analysis Committee (SSHAC) developed guidelines for PSHA which were published as NUREG/CR-6372, 'Recommendations for...

Executive Summary: The U.S. Geological Survey's Geomagnetism Program serves the scientific community and the broader public by collecting and distributing magnetometer data from an array of ground-based observatories and by conducting scientific analysis on those data. Preliminary, variational time-series can be collected and distributed in near-real time, while fully calibrated...

The Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park occupies about 272 square kilometers of mountains, canyons, and alluvial fans in southeastern Arizona just east of Tucson. The park contains some of the last remaining habitat in the Tucson Basin of the lowland leopard frog that lives in the bedrock pools called tinajas in canyons at elevations between 850 and 1,800 meters. Those...

No abstract available.

This report contains the following photographs and information related to the La Conchita, California, landslide: 1) Digital photographs taken by the author during a visit to the La Conchita landslide on January 14, 2005. 2) Correspondence related to the approval and release of USGS Open-File Report 2005-1067, Landslide Hazards at La Conchita, California. 3) A presentation on the La...

Landslides, particularly debris flows, have long been a significant cause of damage and destruction to people and property in the Puget Sound region. Following the years of 1996 and 1997, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated Seattle as a 'Project Impact' city with the goal of encouraging the city to become more disaster resistant to the effects of landslides and...

Empirical rainfall thresholds and related information form a basis for forecasting landslides in the Seattle area. A formula for a cumulative rainfall threshold (CT), P3=3.5–0.67P15, defined by rainfall amounts (in inches) during the last 3 days (72 hours), P3, and the previous 15 days (360 hours), P15, was developed from analysis of historical data for 91 landslides that occurred as...

The October 8, 2005, Kashmir earthquake (M 7.6) triggered several thousand landslides, mainly rock falls and rock slides, in the epicentral area near the cities of Muzafarrabad and Balakot, Pakistan. Most of these were shallow, coalescing rock slides emanating from highly sheared and deformed limestone and dolomite of the Precambrian Muzafarrabad Formation. The largest landslide...