On June 5, 2009, a mountainside collapsed in the Chingqing region of southern China, burying dozens of people. The landslide remained visible in satellite imagery nearly two weeks later.
On January 4, 2009, a mountainside in northern Guatemala suddenly collapsed, sending thousands of tons of rock and debris downhill and burying a nearby road. The event occurred in the state of Alta Verapaz, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Guatemala’s capital city.
A combination of seismographic data and satellite imagery is making it easier for scientists to locate elusive landslides. In summer 2013, Landsat 8 helped pinpoint a slide in eastern Alaska.
Freshly exposed earth traces down the slope of Mount Elgon in Uganda where a large landslide buried three villages on March 2, 2010. This cloud-free, natural color image is from March 11.
Acquired on May 2, 2010, this false-color image shows a growing landslide lake in the Hunza Valley of Northern Pakistan. A white outline shows the landslide lake’s extent in mid-March 2010.