Assessment of existing and potential landslide hazards resulting from the April 25, 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake sequence

Open-File Report 2015-1142, doi:10.3133/ofr20151142:

This report provides a detailed account of assessments performed in May and June 2015 and focuses on valley-blocking landslides because they have the potential to pose considerable hazard to many villages in Nepal. It provides a seismological background of Nepal and then details the methods used for both external and in-country data collection and interpretation. The results consist of an overview of landsliding extent, a characterization of all valley-blocking landslides identified, and a description of video resources that provide high resolution coverage of approximately 1,000 kilometers (km) of river valleys and surrounding terrain affected by the Gorkha earthquake sequence. This is followed by a description of site-specific landslide-hazard assessments conducted while in Nepal and includes detailed descriptions of five noteworthy case studies.