New Mapping of Landslide Risks in the West to Improve Public Safety

[The Sheep Range outside Las Vegas, Nevada, shows loose rock and other evidence of landslides across more than 12 miles of mountains. Photo credit: Daniel Sturmer] [University of Cincinnati] People who live in the Basin and Range of Nevada are accustomed to earthquakes, flash floods and wildfires. But University of Cincinnati  professor Daniel Sturmer said this part of the United States has generated numerous, large landslides as well. This landslide-prone region includes parts of California, Utah and Arizona. “Certainly, in the Basin and Range, it’s a hazard that is vastly underestimated,” he said. Landslides get far less attention than other natural disasters because they typically occur in less populous areas, Sturmer said. But they can be devastating. A landslide in Vajont, Italy, in 1963 killed more than 2,000 people after the face of a mountain crashed into a lake, creating a tsunami that scientists said had the force of nuclear bomb. [Mudslide in California from March, 2017] Sturmer, an assistant professor of geology in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, is working with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology to add specific details on landslides to the state’s map of known hazards. The interactive map includes areas prone to wildfires, flash-flood zones and earthquake fault lines. “These failures frequently occur in El Niño years when you have a lot of rain. Fires exacerbate the problem because you don’t have vegetative roots holding the soil in place. And then you get heavy rains,” he said. Sturmer presented the project to the Geological Society of America conference in Indianapolis in November. Such real-world learning and research are important tenets of Next Lives Here, UC's strategic direction. [Deposits from a landslide outside Pahrump, Nevada. Photo credit: Daniel Sturmer] The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) oversees a national landslide hazards program to reduce long-term losses from landslides and to understand what causes them. Landslides are responsible for as much as $3.5 billion in damage each year in the United States, according to the USGS. Rockfalls kill dozens of people every year, according to the agency. Landslides are never far from the popular imagination. The phrase “won by a landslide” has been in use in connection with elections since at least the 1840s. In his 1880 book “A Tramp Abroad,” humorist Mark Twain wrote of a famous landslide in the Swiss countryside that destroyed four towns 74 years earlier. “A constant marvel with us as we sped along the bases of the steep mountains on this journey was not that avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all the time,” he wrote. “One does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily.” [UC student Nicholas Ferry, left, and UC geology professor Daniel Sturmer talk about a geology specimen in Sturmer's lab. Photo credit: Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services] UC geology graduate student Nicholas Ferry has been studying the Blue Diamond landslide south of Las Vegas, Nevada. “Las Vegas has grown very rapidly over the last 20 years. Development is approaching this area where potentially another landslide could happen,” Ferry said. Ferry said the region with the most landslides ironically is home to the world’s oldest mountains: the Appalachians. He decided to come to UC to study geology because of its in-depth work on landslides. “Of all the schools I applied to, UC was doing the most interesting work. I jumped all over it,” Ferry said. “It’s been pretty exciting.” Landslides hold tremendous potential energy. In the textbook “Geology of California,” authors Robert Norris and Robert Webb wrote about the incredible force behind an Ice Age landslide in the San Bernardino mountains called Blackhawk. It’s one of the most-studied landslides in the United States, Sturmer said. “As the slide moved down the canyon (at 170 mph), it passed over a ridge that crosses the canyon and was thus launched into the air — a geologic version of a flying carpet,” Norris and Webb wrote.