Use of landslides for paleoseismic analysis

In many environments, landslides preserved in the geologic record can be analyzed to determine the likelihood of seismic triggering. If evidence indicates that a seismic origin is likely for a landslide or group of landslides, and if the landslides can be dated, then a paleo-earthquake can be inferred, and some of its characteristics can be estimated. Such paleoseismic landslide studies thus can help reconstruct the seismic history of a site or region. In regions that contain multiple seismic sources and in regions where surface faulting is absent, paleoseismic ground-failure studies are valuable tools in hazard and risk studies that are more concerned with shaking hazards than with interpretation of the movement histories of individual faults. Paleoseismic landslide analysis involves three steps: (1) identifying a feature as a landslide, (2) dating the landslide, and (3) showing that the landslide was triggered by earthquake shaking. This paper addresses each of these steps and discusses methods for interpreting the results of such studies by reviewing the current state of knowledge of paleoseismic landslide analysis.