Abstract
Abstract. Southwest China is located in the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau and it is a region of high seismic activity. Historically, strong earthquakes that occurred here usually generated lots of landslides and brought destructive damages. This paper introduces several earthquake-triggered landslide events in this region and describes their characteristics. Also, the historical data of earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or greater, having occurred in this region, is collected and the relationship between the affected area of landslides and earthquake magnitude is analysed. Based on the study, it can be concluded that strong earthquakes, steep topography as well as fragile geological environment, are the main reasons responsible for serious landslides in southwest China. At the same time, it is found that the relationship between the area affected by landslides and the earthquake magnitude in this region are consistent with what has been obtained worldwide. Moreover, in this paper, it is seen that the size of the areas affected by landslides change enormously even under the same earthquake magnitude in the study region. While at the same tectonic place or fault belt, areas affected by landslides presented similar outline and size. This means that local geological conditions and historical earthquake background have an important influence on landslides distribution, and they should be considered when assessing earthquake-triggered landslide hazards at Grade 1 according to ISSMGE.
Highlights
As a kind of secondary disaster caused by strong earthquakes, earthquake-triggered landslides have drawn much attention in the world because of severe hazards it causes
Yi and Xu et al studied the features of active tectonics and recurrence behavior characteristics of strong earthquakes in this region, the results showed that the low velocity layers associated with the h3ig5h 4conducting layers should be the cause of frequent earthquake occurrencXe .inLth.e Chen et al.: Earthquake-triggered landslides in southwest China upper crust (Yi et al, 2002; Xu et al, 2005)
There are hundreds of earthquakes generated with supposed generated landslides in southwest China in history, the data which can be used for deep analysis is extraordinarily limited
Summary
As a kind of secondary disaster caused by strong earthquakes, earthquake-triggered landslides have drawn much attention in the world because of severe hazards it causes. Different from the landslides caused by rainfall, earthquake-triggered landslides can take place in a comparatively wider region, and sometimes they are the most potentially destructive amongst the secondary geotechnical hazard associated with earthquakes. These large and widely distributed landslides usually cannot be prevented by current mitigating measures, nor can the regular measures used to monitor or predict rainfall-triggered landslides. The destruction caused by landslides during Wenchuan Earthquake in China in 2008 was unexpected and shocked the world This earthquake caused an amount of landslides of more than. (20) Jinhe-Yongsheng-Binchan fault; (21) Yuanjiang fault; (22) Jinshajiang fault; (23) Lancangjiang fault
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