Review of landslide inventories for Nepal between 2010 and 2021 reveals data gaps in global landslide hotspot

This review of landslide inventories provides an essential assessment of the state of knowledge around landslide hazard and can guide the focus of future studies. This paper compiles a database of 117 landslide inventories for Nepal released between 2010 and 2021 and reviews how these existing inventories shape understanding of landslides in Nepal and discuss how future research efforts could mitigate current challenges.

The study finds that 40% of the country was only manually mapped once across the study period, and, crucially, these areas did not always correspond with areas of low landslide susceptibility. The study also provided extrapolated individual inventory characteristics to provide a baseline for future national-scale studies. The review highlights the importance of expanding the footprint of landslide inventories in Nepal to include regions with low mapping coverage and the need for inventories to be openly available, with clear protocols to enable inter-comparison.