Landslides News

June 13, 2025

Top Headlines

Coastal Flooding More Frequent Than Previously Thought

June 2, 2025 — Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water level data to capture instances of ...

Predicting Underwater Landslides Before They Strike

May 30, 2025 — A new method for predicting underwater landslides may improve the resilience of offshore ...

Satellite Data from Ship Captures Landslide-Generated Tsunami

May 14, 2025 — New research demonstrates shipborne navigation systems have potential to improve tsunami detection and ...

Study of Türkiye Gold Mine Landslide Highlights Need for Future Monitoring

May 8, 2025 — A new analysis of a fatal landslide that occurred on 13 February 2024 at the pler Gold Mine in Turkiye reveals that the site of the landslide had been slowly moving for at least four years prior to the ...

Coastal Guardians Pioneer a New Way to Protect the Florida Keys' Shorelines

Mar. 18, 2025 — Nature-based solutions like restoring mangroves, and hybrid solutions, protect vulnerable shorelines. However, they need careful planning to be effective. A new GIS-based tool, combined with varied experts' input, has identified the best shoreline ...

Flooding Expected Sooner in Hawai'i's Sinking Coastal Areas

Mar. 5, 2025 — Some parts of Hawai'i are sinking faster than others. That discovery also highlights that as sea level rises, the infrastructure, businesses, and communities in these low-lying areas are at risk of flooding sooner than scientists anticipated, ...

Earth Scientists Study Sikkim Flood in India to Help Others Prepare for Similar Disasters

Jan. 30, 2025 — Experts from the global Earth science community have pieced together what happened during the massive Sikkim flood to try to help others prepare for similar ...

How We Classify Flood Risk May Give Developers, Home Buyers a False Sense of Security

Jan. 6, 2025 — Traditional methods of communicating how likely an area is to flood focus on designating which zones are 'high risk.' This study suggests that this framing may give developers and homeowners a false ...

What Triggered Nepal's Catastrophic 2021 Flood -- And Could It Happen Again?

Dec. 4, 2024 — Heavy monsoon rainfall, excessive snowmelt and unstable terrain combined to cause the 2021 Melamchi Valley flood disaster in Nepal, according to new research. The findings highlight how a mix of ...

Mangroves Save $855 Billion in Flood Protection Globally, New Study Shows

Dec. 5, 2024 — Mangroves have been shown to provide $855 billion in flood protection services worldwide, according to a new ...

Climate-Driven Hazards Increases Risk for Millions of Coastal Residents, Study Finds

Nov. 21, 2024 — A new study estimates that a 1-meter sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 14 million people and $1 trillion worth of property along the Southeast Atlantic ...

How Flood Risk Affects Home Values

Nov. 19, 2024 — Houses for sale in a flood zone are around 10% cheaper than surrounding areas, according to new research. However, the reduced price tag is not worth the extra risk and can burden buyers with long-term insurance costs, according to new ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:26pm EDT

Sliding Seeds Can Provide Insight Into Devastating Landslides and Rock Avalanches

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers study how Champatis roll and bounce down inclines. The authors released a heap of the seeds down an inclined plane while a camera ...

American Soil Losing More Nutrients for Crops Due to Heavier Rainstorms

Nov. 18, 2024 — Phosphorus, a nutrient in soil essential for sustaining most forms of life, is increasingly disappearing from land as it is washed into waterways throughout the United States, according to a new ...

Understanding Landslides: A New Model for Predicting Motion

Oct. 17, 2024 — Along coastal California, the possibility of earthquakes and landslides are commonly prefaced by the phrase, 'not if, but when.' This precarious reality is now a bit more predictable thanks to ...

Slow-Moving Landslides a Growing, but Ignored, Threat to Mountain Communities

Sep. 17, 2024 — As urban centers in mountainous regions grow, more people are driven to build on steeper slopes prone to slow-moving landslides, a new study finds. ...

Over Two-Million Acres of Floodplain Development Occurred in U.S. in Last Two Decades, Study Finds

Sep. 13, 2024 — A nationwide analysis of community-level floodplain development found that over two-million acres of floodplain were developed over the past two ...

Dams Built to Prevent Coastal Flooding Can Worsen It

Sep. 13, 2024 — The common practice of building dams to prevent flooding can actually contribute to more intense coastal flood events, according to a new study. By analyzing data and measurements from Charleston ...

New Map Shows Where Landslides Are Most Likely to Occur in U.S.

Sep. 11, 2024 — Landslides are a common hazard in the US. In fact, nearly 44% of the country could experience one, potentially catastrophically. Our new national landslide susceptibility map shows where they're most ...

Deserts' Biggest Threat? Flooding

Sep. 9, 2024 — A new study has found that the increase in soil erosion in coastal areas due to desertification is worsening flood impacts on Middle Eastern and North African port cities. The researchers focused ...

Traditional Infrastructure Design Often Makes Extreme Flooding Events Worse

Sep. 4, 2024 — Much of the nation's stormwater infrastructure, designed decades to a century ago to prevent floods, can exacerbate flooding during the severe weather events that are increasing around the ...

Urban Street Networks, Building Density Shape Severity of Floods

Aug. 19, 2024 — The design of streets and layout of buildings have an impact on a city's resilience in the face of increasingly severe floods brought on by climate change. Researchers look at buildings and other ...

Sichuan Province Earthquake Offers Lessons for Landslide Prediction from GNSS Observations

Aug. 7, 2024 — Using data collected from a 2022 magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Luding County in China's Sichuan Province, researchers tested whether Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations could be ...

2023 Rolling Hills Estates Landslide Likely Began the Winter Before

July 12, 2024 — Landslides triggered by intense rainfall can sometimes be predicted along with incoming storms, but dry-season landslides often take people by surprise. The July 2023 Rolling Hills Estates landslide ...

Subduction Zone Splay Faults Compound Hazards of Great Earthquakes

May 20, 2024 — Groundbreaking research has provided new insight into the tectonic plate shifts that create some of the Earth's largest earthquakes and ...

Lake Tsunamis Pose Significant Threat Under Warming Climate

May 6, 2024 — The names might not be familiar -- Cowee Creek, Brabazon Range, Upper Pederson Lagoon -- but they mark the sites of recent lake tsunamis, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in Alaska, British ...

Researchers Introduce New Way to Study, Help Prevent Landslides

Apr. 26, 2024 — Landslides are one of the most destructive natural disasters on the planet, causing billions of dollars of damage and devastating loss of life every year. A global team of researchers has provided ...

Land Under Water: What Causes Extreme Flooding?

Mar. 27, 2024 — If rivers overflow their banks, the consequences can be devastating -- just like the catastrophic floods in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate of 2021 showed. In order to limit flood ...

Surprising Insights About Debris Flows on Mars

Mar. 14, 2024 — The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid ...

New Detection Method Aims to Warn of Landslide Tsunamis

Feb. 21, 2024 — Researchers have devised a way to remotely detect large landslides within minutes of occurrence and to quickly determine whether they are close to open water and present a tsunami ...

New Dates for Landslides Reveal Past Seattle Fault Earthquakes

Nov. 7, 2023 — New maps of more than 1,000 deep-seated landslides in the Puget Lowlands of Washington State provide evidence of the last major earthquake along the Seattle Fault about 1,100 years ago -- and may ...

100-Year Floods Could Occur Yearly by End of 21st Century

Sep. 13, 2023 — Most coastal communities will encounter '100-year floods' annually by the end of the century, even under a moderate scenario where carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2040, according to a new ...

Climate Protection: Land Use Changes Cause the Carbon Sink to Decline

Aug. 10, 2023 — Terrestrial carbon sinks can mitigate the greenhouse effect. Researchers pooled various data sources and found that European carbon storage takes place mainly in surface biomass in East Europe. ...

Nitrogen Runoff Strategies Complicated by Climate Change

Aug. 8, 2023 — As climate change progresses, rising temperatures may impact nitrogen runoff from land to lakes and streams more than projected increases in total and extreme precipitation for most of the ...

What Causes Mudslides and Floods After Wildfires? Hint: It's Not What Scientists Thought

July 17, 2023 — Scientists once assumed that flooding and mudslides after wildfires were linked to the waxy coating that builds up on charred soil, preventing water absorption. Researchers found that water flow came ...

Salinity Changes Threatening Marine Ecosystems

July 12, 2023 — A groundbreaking study reveals the critical yet severely understudied factor of salinity changes in ocean and coastlines caused by climate ...

Geologists Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Predict Landslides

June 28, 2023 — Many factors influence where a landslide will occur, including the shape of the terrain, its slope and drainage areas, the material properties of soil and bedrock, and environmental conditions like ...

Coastal Species Persist on High Seas on Floating Plastic Debris

Apr. 17, 2023 — The high seas have been colonized by a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate species, which can now survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to the floating community ...

Increased Droughts Are Disrupting Carbon-Capturing Soil Microbes, Concerning Ecologists

Apr. 12, 2023 — Soil stores more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined, and soil microbes are largely responsible for putting it there. However, the increasing frequency and severity of drought, such as ...

East Coast, US, Landslide Impacts from Puerto Rico to Vermont and in Between

Mar. 15, 2023 — In the U.S., we may often think of landslides as primarily a West Coast problem, mostly plaguing the mountainous terrain of California, Oregon, and Washington. New research highlights the major ...

Mississippi River Delta Study Reveals Which Human Actions Contribute to Land Loss

Mar. 6, 2023 — Scientists reveal new information about the role humans have played in large-scale land loss in the Mississippi River Delta -- crucial information in determining solutions to the ...

Reassessment of Storegga Event: Second Major Landslide Recognized

Mar. 1, 2023 — Submarine landslides have a large tsunami potential and occurred on the central Norwegian shelf more frequently in the past than previously thought. Scientists investigate the Nyegga landslide off ...