Geologic Publications for Mount Rainier

Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016

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Author(s): Melanie J. Froude, David N. Petley

Category: PUBLICATION
Document Type:
Publisher: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Published Year: 2018
Volume: 18
Number:
Pages: 2161 to 2181
DOI Identifier: 10.5194/nhess-18-2161-2018
ISBN Identifier:
Keywords:

Abstract:
Landslides are a ubiquitous hazard in terrestrial environments with slopes, incurring human fatalities in urban settlements, along transport corridors and at sites of rural industry. Assessment of landslide risk requires high-quality landslide databases. Recently, global landslide databases have shown the extent to which landslides impact on society and identified areas most at risk. Previous global analysis has focused on rainfall-triggered landslides over short  ∼ 5-year observation periods. This paper presents spatiotemporal analysis of a global dataset of fatal non-seismic landslides, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2016. The data show that in total 55997 people were killed in 4862 distinct landslide events. The spatial distribution of landslides is heterogeneous, with Asia representing the dominant geographical area. There are high levels of interannual variation in the occurrence of landslides. Although more active years coincide with recognised patterns of regional rainfall driven by climate anomalies, climate modes (such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation) cannot yet be related to landsliding, requiring a landslide dataset of 30+ years. Our analysis demonstrates that landslide occurrence triggered by human activity is increasing, in particular in relation to construction, illegal mining and hill cutting. This supports notions that human disturbance may be more detrimental to future landslide incidence than climate.

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Suggested Citations:
In Text Citation:
Froude and Petley (2018) or (Froude and Petley, 2018)

References Citation:
Froude, M.J. and D.N. Petley, 2018, Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 18, pp. 2161-2181, doi: 10.5194/nhess-18-2161-2018.