U.S. Landslide Inventory and Susceptibility

Landslides are a damaging, disruptive, and potentially deadly geologic hazard. While landslides occur in every U.S. State, their impacts are often a localized and episodic phenomenon, plus landslide types and triggering mechanisms vary widely across the country. Our understanding of current and future landslide problems is based on observations of past slope failures, and these data on landslide occurrence differ greatly in terms of quality, accessibility, and extent. The contrasting and inconsistent data present a challenge to developing a nation-wide picture of these hazards. To address this, the USGS focuses on identifying and understanding landslide activity, compiling existing landslide inventories, and developing tools to predict landslide occurrence and potential across the U.S. In particular, the two products described and linked here in our interactive online map are the national landslide inventory compilation (Mirus et al., 2020) and the national landslide susceptibility map (refer to Mirus et al., 2024).