Publications

A new comprehensive areal model of earthquake-induced landslides (CAMEL) has been developed to assist in planning decisions related to disaster risk reduction. CAMEL provides an integrated framework for modeling all types of earthquake-induced landslides using fuzzy logic systems and geographic information systems. CAMEL is designed to facilitate quantitative and qualitative...

We used historical records of damaging landslides triggered by rainstorms and a newly developed Probabilistic Landslide Assessment Cost Estimation System (PLACES) to estimate the numbers and direct costs of future landslides in the 10-county San Francisco Bay region. Historical records of damaging landslides in the region are incomplete. Therefore, our estimates of numbers and costs of...

Conventional bathymetry, sidescan-sonar and seismic-reflection data, and recent, multibeam surveys of large parts of the Southern California Borderland disclose the presence of numerous submarine landslides. Most of these features are fairly small, with lateral dimensions less than ??2 km. In areas where multibeam surveys are available, only two large landslide complexes were identified...

We measured displacement, pore-water pressure, and climatic conditions for 3 years at the continuously moving Slumgullion landslide in Colorado, USA. The landslide accelerated when pore-water pressure increased within the landslide body, but this occurred as pore-water pressure decreased along the landslide margin. The decrease probably occurred in response to shear-induced soil dilation...

Rainfall‐induced landslides are pervasive in hillslope environments around the world and among the most costly and deadly natural hazards. However, capturing their occurrence with scientific instrumentation in a natural setting is extremely rare. The prevailing thinking on landslide initiation, particularly for those landslides that occur under intense precipitation, is that the failure...

Loss of life and property caused by landslides triggered by extreme rainfall events demonstrates the need for landslide-hazard assessment in developing countries where recovery from such events often exceeds the country's resources. Mapping landslide hazards in developing countries where the need for landslide-hazard mitigation is great but the resources are few is a challenging, but not

Landslides are often viewed together with other natural hazards, such as earthquakes and fires, as phenomena whose size distribution obeys an inverse power law. Inverse power law distributions are the result of additive avalanche processes, in which the final size cannot be predicted at the onset of the disturbance. Volume and area distributions of submarine landslides along the U.S...

A new depth-averaged model of debris-flow motion describes simultaneous evolution of flow velocity and depth, solid and fluid volume fractions, and pore-fluid pressure. Non-hydrostatic pore-fluid pressure is produced by dilatancy, a state-dependent property that links the depth-averaged shear rate and volumetric strain rate of the granular phase. Pore-pressure changes caused by shearing...

The 12 May 2008 M7.9 Wenchuan earthquake in the People's Republic of China represented a unique opportunity for the international community to use commonly available GIS (Geographic Information System) tools, like Google Earth (GE), to rapidly evaluate and assess landslide hazards triggered by the destructive earthquake and its aftershocks. In order to map earthquake-triggered landslides...

Tsunami generation from the Currituck landslide offshore North Carolina and propagation of waves toward the U.S. coastline are modeled based on recent geotechnical analysis of slide movement. A long and intermediate wave modeling package (COULWAVE) based on the non-linear Boussinesq equations are used to simulate the tsunami. This model includes procedures to incorporate bottom friction...

The M s 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake or "Great Sichuan Earthquake" occurred at 14:28 p.m. local time on 12 May 2008 in Sichuan Province, China. Damage by earthquake-induced landslides was an important part of the total earthquake damage. This report presents preliminary observations on the Hongyan Resort slide located southwest of the main epicenter, shallow mountain surface failures in...

The nearly complete coverage of the U.S. Atlantic continental slope and rise by multibeam bathymetry and backscatter imagery provides an opportunity to reevaluate the distribution of submarine landslides along the margin and reassess the controls on their formation. Landslides can be divided into two categories based on their source areas: those sourced in submarine canyons and those...