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Department of the Interior - U.S. Geological Survey

Inventory of Landslides Triggered by the 1994 Northridge, California Earthquake
Edwin L. Harp and Randall W. Jibson
Open-File Report 95-213
USGS Denver, CO 80225
1995

The 17 January 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake (M=6.7) triggered more than 11,000 landslides over an area of about 10,000 km². Most of the landslides were concentrated in a 1,000-km² area that includes the Santa Susana Mountains and the mountains north of the Santa Clara River valley. We mapped landslides triggered by the earthquake in the field and from 1:60,000-scale aerial photography provided by the U.S. Air Force and taken the morning of the earthquake; these were subsequently digitized and plotted in a GIS-based format, as shown on the accompanying maps (which also are accessible via Internet). Most of the triggered landslides were shallow (1-5 m), highly disrupted falls and slides in weakly cemented Tertiary to Pleistocene clastic sediment. Average volumes of these types of landslides were less than 1,000 m³, but many had volumes exceeding 100,000 m³. Many of the larger disrupted slides traveled more than 50 m, and a few moved as far as 200 m from the bases of steep parent slopes. Deeper ( >5 m) rotational slumps and block slides numbered in the hundreds, a few of which exceeded 100,000 m³ in volume. The largest triggered landslide was a block slide having a volume of 8X10E06 m³. Triggered landslides damaged or destroyed dozens of homes, blocked roads, and damaged oil-field infrastructure. Analysis of landslide distribution with respect to variations in (1) landslide susceptibility and (2) strong shaking recorded by hundreds of instruments will form the basis of a seismic landslide hazard analysis of the Los Angeles area.

(accessed February 3, 1998)

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