6.5 million Americans live in landslide danger zones, study finds

An estimated 6.5 million Americans live in homes built on or next to landslide-prone land, according to a major national study by the University of Washington.By studying 128 million buildings across the United States, researchers created the Landslide Exposure Database (LED). It is the first detailed national map showing how landslide hazards overlap with where people live.The findings, published in Earth's Future, an AGU journal focused on sustainability, reveal a major gap between urban and rural communities in both landslide risk and their ability to recover.Mapping local risk at the building levelUnlike large disasters such as hurricanes or floods, landslides affect very small areas where the level of danger can change sharply over short distances."The susceptibility at one location can be vastly different than the susceptibility at a neighboring location just 10, 20 or 30 meters away," said Joseph Wartman, a civil engineer at the University of Washington and co-author…