Below is the fatal landslide map for July 2009. Each yellow dot represents a single landslide that killed a person. The background is the etopo1 DEM, with the darker colours representing higher terrain. As usual clicking on the image should provide a high resolution view. The image is a GIF so you should be able to download it, but please acknowledge the source. You will see that in July the …

One of the reasons that the northern hemisphere summer is essentially the global landslide season is that landfalling tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) represent a rather efficient way of triggering slope failures. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, Taiwan, Japan, SE and S China, the Philippines and Vietnam. Typhoon rain is astonishing to experience for the first time – peak intensities of 100 mm per hour are not …

The summer solstice today seems like a good time to take stock of the position with fatal landslides to date, as collected in the Durham Fatal Landslide Database. Globally the fatal landslide season really starts in early June, the point at which the Asian monsoon starts to generate substantial amounts of rainfall in South and East Asia. Of course the greatest proportion of landslides occur in July and August, so …

One of the most admirable landslide websites that I know is the Save the Hills blog, which is the mouthpiece of a community level group trying to raise awareness of the problems of landslides in Darjeeling in NE India. I have featured this site several times before. As Cyclone Alia has closed in on the area over the last few days See below) they have been warning of the danger …

Yesterday there was a special session of the Sinorock Conference in Hong Kong, focused on the Wenchuan Earthquake. This involved six presentations and then a lively round-table discussion. This is a brief review. The first talk was given by colleagues from Chengdu University of Technology on the topic of the landslides triggered by the earthquake. This was visually spectacular, emphasising the scale, density and impact of the landslides that were …

Whilst the transition towards the Northern Hemisphere summer is rather pleasant for many of us, the start of May also marks the start of the landslide season in the Northern Hemisphere. Of course the main problems kick in when the SW monsoon really gets going in Asia and the tropical cyclone season properly begins in the N. Pacific and N. Atlantic basins, but already there are clear signs that the …

Rather later than is ideal (for which I apologise), here are the maps for fatal landslides in October 2008. First, the statistics:Number of recorded fatal landslides: 22Number of recorded fatalities: 179The average for the period 2002-2007 inclusive was 398 fatalities, excluding the impact of the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, so 2008 is considerably below the long term average. This is the map of the fatal landslides that I recorded (click …

One of the most vexed questions in landslide science at the moment is that of the potential link between climate change and mass movement occurrence. I have yet to meet a landslide researcher who does not believe in the reality of anthropogenic global warming, so we are all deeply interested in how our particular systems are likely to respond. Unfortunately this is not an easy question to answer for three …

The map below shows the provisional distribution of fatal landslides for June 2008. The (again provisional) statistics are:Number of fatal landslides: 55Number of fatalities: 2127 Once again, the number of recorded fatalities this month has been substantially below the average for 2002-2007, which is 504 deaths. This is consistent with the monthly totals for the whole of the year – indeed at the moment 2008 has the lowest number of …

The map below shows the distribution of fatal landslides for June 2008. The statistics are:Number of fatal landslides: 43Number of fatalities: 215 As has been the pattern all year, June was substantially below the average number of fatalities for may in 2003-2007, which is 334 deaths. Interestingly, during June there have been extensive reports of intense and prolonged rainfall events, but this does not seem to have translated into fatal …