Landslide Inventory Pilot Project
California | New Jersey | North Carolina | Oregon | Washington
A landslide forced officials to close a section of Highway 30 near Clatskanie, Oregon - just before the mud and debris poured down, burying at least two homes. The slide from a debris clogged Eilertsen Creek washed a mobile home onto the Lower Columbia River Highway about five miles west of town and buried two others, a spokesman from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) said. The landslide occurred December 11, 2007. Photo courtesy of Clatskanie, Oregon, PUD employee Kerry Kallunki.
Currently, the preliminary framework consists of a website featuring both technical and socioeconomic landslide information, from individual state surveys and the U.S. Geological Survey and relevant information from other sources. The primary organizing entity is The Landslide Inventory Steering Committee, composed of members of USGS and State Geological Surveys and other state agencies, which will guide the growth, development, and oversight of a national landslide inventory database website.
The website will also provide a clearinghouse for mapping and data collection techniques utilized by the various agencies and surveys involved. The long-term goal is to promote more consistent landslide mapping and databases nationwide, as well as provide information on innovative mapping techniques.
Users of landslide inventory data include:
- Landslide Research community
- Larger Science Research community
- Transportation managers
- Emergency managers
- Urban Planners
- Reinsurance and Insurance Industry
- Public Land managers (e.g. parks and open space managers, timber harvest managers)
- Water-quality managers (e.g. watershed managers)
- Wildlife managers (e.g. fisheries managers)
- Reservoir operators
- Advocates for public lands, watersheds, and wildlife (i.e. Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, for example)
