Impact of climate variability on landslide hazard in the western United States
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Landslides broadly include debris flows, rock falls, avalanches, mudslides, and any other down-gradient movement of soil, rock, or debris under the direct influence of gravity. Although landslides occur over a broad range of lithologies, climatologies, hydrological regimes, and land use types, the majority are caused by precipitation. However, for most precipitation-triggered landslides, other complex atmospheric, surface, and subsurface conditions also play a role in predisposing a slope to landslides by increasing the effects of down-gradient forces and/or reducing the strength of the underlying slope. While there is "high confidence" that climate change will affect landslide hazard in some regions, several limitations persist in attributing the unique influence of a climate variable — like precipitation — to a given inventory of landslides. Key challenges broadly include: the short length of the landslide record, geographic reporting bias, and the complexity of the physical system. This dissertation develops strategies for overcoming these attribution challenges, while enhancing fundamental understanding of landslide response climate variability. Chapter 1 applies panel regression with fixed effects to quantify the impact of daily, ten-day, and thirty-day precipitation accumulation on landslide hazard in urbanized and non-urbanized areas. Chapter 2 evaluates the effect of wildfire severity on precipitation-triggered landslide hazard across the western United States. In addition to developing empirical frameworks for analyzing causal relationships between land use, climate variability, and landslides, the chapters enhance fundamental understanding of landslide response to climate variability.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2024; ©2024 |
| Publication date | 2024; 2024 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Johnston, Elizabeth Claire |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Diffenbaugh, Noah S |
| Thesis advisor | Diffenbaugh, Noah S |
| Thesis advisor | Burke, Marshall |
| Thesis advisor | Caers, Jef |
| Thesis advisor | Willenbring, Jane K |
| Degree committee member | Burke, Marshall |
| Degree committee member | Caers, Jef |
| Degree committee member | Willenbring, Jane K |
| Associated with | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Earth System Science |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Elizabeth Johnston. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Earth System Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2024. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/yt378bm7988 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2024 by Elizabeth Claire Johnston
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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