1. Mass Wasting & Soil Survey

2. Objectives Show some case studies of how soil surveys handle landslides. – Guam – North Dakota – Alabama – California Discussion: are we doing enough? – Are we alerting our users to conditions and potentials for slope failures?

3. Island of Guam Affected by rotational landslides, in certain soils. Just looking at the DEM, can you guess where they occur?

4. Eocene, Oligocene & Miocene; tuff, tuff breccia, tuffaceous sandstone/shale Pliocene & Pleistocene; Reef complex, reef detritus SSURGO soils of Guam Grouped by parent material (mostly)

5. Typical slides in soft, deeply weathered volcanic saprolite Anthropic grasslands are incapable of stabilizing this material: tectonic uplift; deeply dissected; 80-100” rainfall; seasonally distributed All pictures by Bob Gavenda, SS in Guam

6. Slides are extensive

7. Zoomed-in view of slide areas Note recent burns; an aggravating factor So… how would you map this?

8. Akina series: Inceptic Haplustox v. fine, kaolinitic, isohyperthermic Akina – Badland complexes (various slope classes)

9. SSURGO delineations of Akina-badlands cpx.

10. Rotational Slides provide parent material for Togcha soils in footslope positions Akina (residuum in saprolite) Togcha (“slope alluvium” in SS; what should we call it?) Note: taxonomic classifications shown are out of date. The soil survey does not clearly address the issue of rotational slides.

11. Slides and soil survey in North Dakota McKenzie county Barnes county

12. McKenzie county, ND Lots of badlands – any slides? Little Missouri R

13. IFSAR hillshade added… Do the slides stand out more?

14. Here’s how they mapped it…

15. Another view: IFSAR w hillshade

16. 116F—Kremlin-Cabbart loams, slumped, 9 to 40 percent slopes Setting: Kremlin soils occur on footslopes. Cabbart soils occur on summits and shoulders. This map unit occurs on ridges that are slumped in badlands. Map Unit Composition (percent) Named Components Kremlin and similar soils: 15 to 45 percent Cabbart and similar soils: 15 to 50 percent Average Component Composition Cabbart: 29 percent Kremlin: 19 percent Boxwell: 17 percent Scairt: 14 percent Lonna: 13 percent Badland, outcrop: 5 percent Fleak: 3 percent From the soil survey manuscript (Aziz et al, 2006)

17. Valley City, ND Barnes county. Sheyenne R., I-94 at Valley City. Where are the slides?

19. From Anderson (2004), NDGS

20. LiDAR & SSURGO Kloten – Buse cpx., 9-35% Kloten: shale @ <20” Buse: till From Soil Survey: Kloten – lower side slopes Buse – upper side slopes, shoulders, & summits

21. Note “bumpy” texture of LiDAR in the Kloten-Buse 9-35% unit

22. From hard-copy soil survey: Not readily available to public How can we incorporate our knowledge of potential slippage more explicitly into the soil survey?

23. Mass movement and soil survey in Huntsville, AL (Madison county). Viewed on a 2009 SGI field trip.

24. Spectacular rotational slide near Huntsville, AL Plateau summit Steep slopes Fancy houses Oblique view from ArcGIS Explorer

25. Slope failure (main scarp) at contact of overlying sandstone with underlying shale. Soil survey lines follow this contact. Can we capture this information in SSURGO?

26. Soil Survey of Napa county, CA Fagan clay loam, 30-50% slopes, slumped Fine, smectitic, Typic Argiudolls 40-60” to Cr sandstone

27. Associated with marine sediments(?)

28. Summary and Discussion Mass wasting is handled in various ways in county soil surveys: – Components; e.g., badlands – Map unit name; e.g. slumped Failure zones are implicitly identified in county soil surveys: – Contrasting components within map units – Boundaries between map units Discussion: can we do better? – i.e., clearly alert users to landslide activity and hazards, both spatially (maps) and in attributes / interpretations.