The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
As the SW. Monsoon in South Asia withdraws, the landslide season in that part of the world is now mostly complete. This is a good point at which to reflect on the pattern that we’ve seen this year.
The map below shows the fatal landslides that I’ve recorded along the Himalayan Arc this year to date. It does not include the huge number of landslides that occurred in Nepal in September (which would add a lot more red dots in a small area).
The colour coding is by month – the cold colours (blue) are winter, the green colours is early spring, yellow is late spring, orange and red are summer (June, July and September), brown is autumn (October).
As always, there are a large number of fatal landslides extending along the Himalayan Arc. They mostly occur in the southern foothills of the high Himalayan peaks, which are highly monsoonal and populated. This is the normal pattern.
Note the different timings for the different parts of the mountains. To the west, in Pakistan and Kashmir, the landslides mostly occur in the spring (i.e. have green coloured dots on the map). Further east, the landslides occurred in the main part of the summer (orange and red dots).
Note also that at each end of the mountain chain, the landslides are much more widely distributed, in the case of Pakistan extending into the higher mountains. This probably reflects both the topography and patterns of human occupancy.
The data are fascinating, but we must not lose sight of the fact that every one of these dots represents a human tragedy.
Reference for the background research
As always, I’m happy for others to use the map, but please use the citation below and link to this blog.
Froude M.J. and Petley D.N. 2018. Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016. Natural Hazards and Earth System Science 18, 2161-2181. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-2161-2018
