Ten people were killed in a large landslide in Papua New Guinea triggered by heavy rainfall associated with Tropical Cyclone Maila. On 9 April 2026, a large landslide occurred at Lamarain in the Inland Baining LLG of Gazelle District in Papua New Guinea. The landslide was triggered by heavy rainfall associated with the passage of […]
Hazards & Disasters
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
On the growth of research in landslides
Since 1994 there has been a 32 times increase in the number of research outputs with the keyword “landslide”. In a couple of weeks time, I have the pleasure of being one of the invited speakers at the Landslide Risk and Geoengineering (LaRGE) Conference in Queenstown, New Zealand. Ahead of that presentation, I’ve been using […]
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
Landslides in Art Part 36: The Great Landslide of 1664 of Runswick Bay on The day Village That Slipped into the Sea by “Jotter”
The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides. I’ve not posted about Landslides in Art much in recent years – the most recent edition was almost two years ago – but loyal readers will know that this is a long […]
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
Wealth and land-cover change govern landslide fatalities on world’s mountains
A new paper Fidan et al. (2026) demonstrates that wealth and the rate of land-cover change play a key role in determining the occurrence of fatal landslides in mountain areas. These factors are statistically more significant that precipitation and topography. A fascinating new paper (Fidan et al. 2026 – this paper is both open access […]
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
The 19 March 2026 landslide on Interstate 5 near Bellingham in Washington State, USA
Post based on material kindly provided by Professor Douglas H. Clark of the Geology Department at Western Washington University. Many thanks to Doug for providing this information. On 19 March 2026, a c.2000 cubic metre rockslide blocked the northern bound lanes of Interstate 5 near to Bellingham, WA. The road will not fully reopen until […]
Posted inEditors' Vox
Synergistic Integration of Flood Inundation Modeling Methods
Recent flood modeling advances are trending into silos that compete rather than complement each other, hampering the opportunity for transformative progress toward protecting lives and communities.
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
Fatal landslides in March 2026
In March 2026 I recorded 61 fatal landslides causing 520 fatalities, the highest March total on record. This is my regular update for the number of fatal global landslides, focusing on March 2026. AAs usual, this data has been collected in line with the methodology described in Froude and Petley (2018) and in Petley (2012). References are listed […]
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
Raknehaugen in Norway: an Iron Age memorial to a landslide
An Iron Age burial mound in Norway has been reinterpreted as being a memorial for a catastrophic landslide during a period of climatic instability. There is a very interesting article (Gustavsen 2026) in the European Journal of Archaeology that re-examines an Iron Age mound known as Raknehaugen (Rakni’s Mound) in Norway. This mound has, until […]
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Taming the Seismicity Tsunami with a Scalable Bayesian Framework
By combining the power of artificial intelligence with advanced physics simulations, a new framework called “SPIDER” allows us to map seismic activity with unprecedented clarity.
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
On the economic benefits of rural roads in Nepal
A new paper (Adhikari et al. 2026) in the journal Asian Development Review shows that earthen roads in the hilly areas of Nepal generate limited economic benefits but carry a high landslide cost. Loyal readers of this blog will have seen many posts that cover the problematic landslide history of low technology rural roads in […]