Dedicated lectures: Landslide hydrology and monitoring across the U.S.: implications for situational awareness and early warning

Abstract

Landslide early warning systems deliver actionable information to help reduce landslide-related losses. These are typically built around the assumption that the longer or harder it rains, the more likely landslides will be triggered by a given storm event. This approach largely ignores the importance of antecedent wetness conditions, relatively short-duration spikes in rainfall intensity, different landslide types, and non-stationary impacts of changes in climate or land-cover disturbances. Hillslope hydrologic monitoring in landslide prone terrain across the U.S. reveals some important gaps in our theoretical understanding of subsurface processes from transient, near-surface responses to the seasonal and annual “memory” of previous precipitation inputs. This presentation will tour a variety of landslide monitoring sites from across the United States to provide some insights on triggering conditions and implications for landslide early warning and situational awareness.