A landslide is a mass-movement phenomenon in which soil, rock, regolith, or debris moves downslope under the influence of gravity, often along a discrete shear surface or failure plane. It encompasses diverse mechanisms such as rotational and translational slides, debris flows, rockfalls, and avalanches, typically initiated when driving forces exceed resisting forces due to factors like pore-water pressure increase, seismic shaking, weathering, or anthropogenic slope modification. Landslides are characterized by rapid to extremely rapid kinematics, spatial heterogeneity of displacement, and strong dependence on lithology, structural discontinuities, hydrological conditions, and topography, and are central to geomorphological evolution and natural hazard assessment.
Large earthquakes can dramatically reshape mountain landscapes by triggering thousands of landslides and rapidly accelerating erosion. However, the reasons why some mountain regions experience intense, long-lasting erosion ...
Earth Sciences
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An unstable mountain rock formation looming above the Swiss village of Kandersteg threatens a landslide that could rival the disaster that destroyed nearby Blatten last year, a collapse scientists linked to thawing permafrost ...
Environment
22 hours ago
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Hurricane Lala was pulling away from Hawaii's Big Island early Sunday as heavy rain and strong winds struck the U.S. Pacific state and officials warned of potentially dangerous flooding.
Environment
Aug 16, 2026
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Torrential rain pummeled eastern Japan on Thursday, triggering landslides and power outages and prompting the weather authority to issue its highest-level heavy rain warning for the region for the first time.
Environment
Aug 13, 2026
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Every monsoon, India's rivers turn brown. To most of us, that color simply means muddy water. But hidden within it is the material that builds fertile floodplains, creates river islands, nourishes deltas and even shapes coastlines: ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 10, 2026
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For most of the year, the Barnes Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic lies quiet under a blanket of snow. By summer, that snow melts back, and the ice cap transforms in texture, its bare ice dotted with turquoise ponds and its ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 4, 2026
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Landslides cause an estimated $3 billion to $6 billion in damage and multiple fatalities annually in the United States. Those numbers could easily increase as housing needs spur development in landslide-prone areas and climate ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 29, 2026
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The seafloor plays an important ecological and societal role. Understanding the processes that shape this environment will help guide conservation policy and decision-making about underwater infrastructure and geohazards.
Earth Sciences
Jul 22, 2026
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express has spotted a swath of metallic-looking waves filling Mars's large Kaiser Crater—an ancient and otherworldly dune field sculpted by wind.
Planetary Sciences
Jul 15, 2026
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Scientists have detected evidence of landslides on Pluto for the first time. A paper published in the journal Icarus reports that images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby revealed six large landslides in ...
