Landslides and the Hazards Posed to Society by a Common Geologic Process

Presenter: Stephen Slaughter Associate Program Coordinator for Landslide Hazards

Landslides occur in all 50 states and territories and landslide loss in the US is estimated in the billions of dollars and cause multiple deaths annually. Landslides can happen with no notice and can move over a period of seconds, hours, days, weeks, or longer. They can damage or destroy homes, infrastructure, transportation networks, and utilities. Despite the scientific community’s thorough understanding of landslides processes and the hazards they pose to society, there remain numerous challenges to reducing annual loss and increasing public safety from landslides. These challenges include identifying who and what is vulnerable to landslides; understating how land use, land management, and development influence risk; and how historical and current policies create inequities and vulnerabilities from landslides. This presentation will discuss those challenges along with other issues landslides pose to governments and homeowners. Significant historic landslides and their societal impacts will also be discussed along with reasons why future homeowners should always consider landslide hazards when choosing to live near or on a slope.

STEPHEN SLAUGHTER has worked in landslide hazards for nearly 20 years, focusing primarily on landslide inventories, susceptibility and hazard analysis, outreach, and emergency response. His current role is the Associate Program Coordinator for Landslide Hazards at the USGS, which helps direct the Landslide Hazards Program. He also coordinates landslide technical response for domestic and international landslide disasters. Prior to the USGS, Stephen’s career varied from consulting forest land managers on harvest-related landslides, working on emergency teams to assess post-wildfire debris flow hazards to downstream communities, consulting emergency managers on significant landslide events, developing and managing a landslide hazards program for the state of Washington, assisting developing countries seeking to improve their existing landslide programs, and producing educational material to help non-scientists understand landslide hazards. Stephen is a recent transplant to Colorado, moving from Washington state where he was raised, attended college (BS in geology at Western WA. Univ. and MS in geology at Central WA. Univ.), is a Licensed Engineering Geologists, and worked his first 15 years as a geologist for the state of Washington at the Dept. of Natural Resources and then the Washington Geologic Survey.