Field mapping of landslides is still important, even in the era of LiDAR and AI
Estimating where landslide debris is going to come to rest is an important part of hazard delineation. LiDAR change detection imagery has made evaluating landslide runouts much easier, with color-coded loss and gain zones providing at-a-glance information about where slides started and stopped. The Haywood County, North Carolina, debris flow shown below is a great…
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A new look at a devastating landslide of the 1916 storm–the Jacks Branch debris flow
Note: This post is based on Jule Hubbard’s 2016 article, linked here. It’s a fascinating piece that does an excellent job capturing the human impacts of a notable landslide during the 1916 storm. You should give it a read before continuing… Prior to Helene, landslide geologists in western North Carolina devoted considerable energy towards studying…
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New lidar imagery shows the full extent of Helene’s impacts
by Philip S. Prince Over the last year, numerous collections of aerial imagery have shown Helene’s effects on western North Carolina mountainsides. This imagery has been useful in understanding the extent of the storm’s impacts on the landscape, but remaining tree cover and the natural irregularity of the landscape make it difficult to fully appreciate…
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The undeniable value of landslide risk assessment
Landslides (and particularly debris flows) aren’t a daily occurrence in western North Carolina, so knowledge of the landslide risk of a specific property may not always seem important. A few years ago, ALC advised a client against purchase of a high-risk property located in an area that, at the time, seemed quite safe and desirable…
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Appalachian Landslide Consultants, PLLC 