Earthquake-induced landslides: 1980-1997

A database of earthquake-induced landslides has been compiled which extends the work of Keefer (Keefer DK. Landslides caused by earthquakes. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 1984;95:406-421) who covered the perio d 1811-1980 to 1997. A total of 36 earthquakes world-wide are included, the new database having about the same number of earthquakes as reported by Ke efer. Correlations evolving from the new database are compared with those o f Keefer. Generally the results are very similar, though the presence of ex treme outliers in some of the correlations emphasises the need to be aware of special cases, particularly those involving quick clay landslides. Seism ological features, including multiple earthquakes and simultaneous arrival of different phases of seismic waves, also influence the outliers. The corr elations between earthquake magnitude and total landslide area, however, di ffer somewhat from Keefer's. For the intermediate magnitude range 5.3-7.0, a modified correlation is suggested. The scatter of the data from which the correlations are derived is greater than found by Keefer. This is ascribed to the different geographic locations of the earthquakes in the two data s ets. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.