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Havenith, H., Strom, A., Jongmans, D., Abdrakhmatov, K., Delvaux, D. & Trefois, P. 2003. ‘Seismic triggering of landslides, Part A: Field evidence from the Northern Tien Shan’. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 3: 135-149. I.F. 1.345.
Article in a scientific Journal / Article in a Journal
Landslides triggered by strong earthquakes often
caused most of the global damage and most of all casualties
related to the events, such as shown by the M = 7.7 Peru
earthquake in 1970, by the M = 7.6 El Salvador earthquake
in 2001 or by the M = 7.4 Khait (Tajikistan) earthquake
in 1949. The obvious impact of a landslide on the population
is directly related to its movement. Yet, prediction of
future failure potential and hence future risk to population
is necessary in order to avoid further catastrophes and involves
the analyses of the origin of seismic instability. The
seismic landslide potential is mainly determined by the interaction
between the regional seismic hazard and local geological
conditions. At a local scale, seismic factors interfering
with geological conditions can produce site-specific ground
motions. The influence of such Site Effects on instability is
the principal topic of this paper, which is divided into two
parts, A and B. The present Part A is concerned with the correlation
of field data with observed instability phenomena.
Field data were obtained on mainly three landslide sites in
the Northern Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan, Central
Asia. Geophysical prospecting, earthquake recordings, geological
observation, trenching and geotechnical tests were
the main investigation tools. The collected information gives
an insight in the geological background of the slope failure
and allows us to roughly infer failure mechanisms from field
evidence. A detailed analysis of the susceptibility of a mechanism
to specific geological conditions will be shown in Part
B.