The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
Earlier this week, I posted my fatal landslide data for October 2024. I have had a request also to post the map that shows the distribution of the landslides. As per my previous post, this is provisional – this work has not yet been through peer review, and further research is needed to pin the landslides down precisely. However, this is indicative of the likely distribution.
So, this is the map of fatal landslides that occurred in October 2024:-
As always, I’m happy for others to use this image (and the one below) under a creative commons license, but please cite Froude and Petley (2018) for the methodology.
In October, the landslide distribution typically moves away from the focused locations associated with the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon into a more widely spread pattern. Small numbers of fatal landslides still occurred in the tail end of the monsoon in South Asia. There is a distinct cluster in the Philippines associated with tropical depressions / cyclones.
This is the global fatal landslide map for the whole of 2024 to the end of October:-
The points are coloured by month of the year – the cold colours are the Northern Hemisphere winter, the warm colours are the NH summer – you’ll get the idea.
In 2024 we have hotspots in the normal places – the southern edge of the Himalayan Arc, Indonesia, Philippines, SE Brazil, Central America, etc. The very clear focus in parts of Africa has been a growing trend in recent years. Note the very clear preponderance of warm colours, reflecting the seasonal pattern of landslides that kill people.
As an aside, I’m aware that the link to the dataset that underpinned Froude and Petley (2018) no longer works, and I am not able to restore it. If you want the dataset, please email me directly. I can send it to you as an Excel spreadsheet.
Reference
Froude M.J. and Petley D.N. 2018. Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016. Natural Hazards and Earth System Science 18, 2161-2181. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-2161-2018
