Natural hazard involving ground movement
A landslide near Cusco, Peru , in 2018
A NASA model has been developed to look at how potential landslide activity is changing around the world.
Animation of a landslide in San Mateo County, California
Landslides , also known as landslips ,[1] [2] [3] are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls , mudflows , shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows .[4] Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater,[5] in which case they are called submarine landslides .
Gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, but there are other factors affecting slope stability that produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as a heavy rainfall , an earthquake , a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable.
Landslides are frequently made worse by human development (such as urban sprawl ) and resource exploitation (such as mining and deforestation ). Land degradation frequently leads to less stabilization of soil by vegetation .[6] Additionally, global warming caused by climate change and other human impact on the environment , can increase the frequency of natural events (such as extreme weather ) which trigger landslides.[7] Landslide mitigation describes the policy and practices for reducing the risk of human impacts of landslides, reducing the risk of natural disaster .
^ "Landslide synonyms" . thesaurus.com . Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus. 2013. Archived from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2018 .
^ McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 11th Edition, ISBN 9780071778343 , 2012
^ "USGS factsheet, Landslide Types and Processes, 2004" . Archived from the original on 2020-10-04. Retrieved 2020-08-28 .
^ Hungr, Oldrich; Leroueil, Serge; Picarelli, Luciano (2014-04-01). "The Varnes classification of landslide types, an update" . Landslides . 11 (2): 167–194. Bibcode :2014Lands..11..167H . doi :10.1007/s10346-013-0436-y . ISSN 1612-5118 . S2CID 38328696 .
^ Haflidason, Haflidi; Sejrup, Hans Petter; Nygård, Atle; Mienert, Jurgen; Bryn, Petter; Lien, Reidar; Forsberg, Carl Fredrik; Berg, Kjell; Masson, Doug (2004-12-15). "The Storegga Slide: architecture, geometry and slide development" . Marine Geology . COSTA - Continental Slope Stability. 213 (1): 201–234. Bibcode :2004MGeol.213..201H . doi :10.1016/j.margeo.2004.10.007 . ISSN 0025-3227 .
^ Cite error: The named reference :6
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^ Merzdorf, Jessica. "Climate Change Could Trigger More Landslides in High Mountain Asia" . Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet . NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original on 2023-02-04. Retrieved 2023-02-04 .