CAUSES OF LANDSLIDES

1. Moisture Content
High soil water content will reduce soil strength especially in hill slope sediments.
It is also said that strong moisture content will constantly lowers the soil’s shear
strength and instability. It may be caused by intense duration of rainfall events.
Exceeding rainfall levels may likely to initiate slope failures. However, if the
moisture content is initially high enough, landslides may still happen without any
rainfall event

2. Earthquake
Strong ground motions frequently trigger landslides. Earthquakes can create
stresses that make weak slopes fail. When there is a presence of earthquake,
rock movements, slope failures, debris flows, and etc. may happen and
contribute to landslides. These are categorized under seismic activities

3. Human Activities
In some cases, human activities can be a contributing factor in causing
landslides. They are commonly a result of building roads and structures without
adequate grading of slopes, poorly planned alteration of drainage patterns, and
disturbing old landslides. For example:

• Clear Cutting - Method of timber harvesting which completely removes all

old growth timber from the area. This method is hazardous because it
destroys the existing mechanical root structure in the area. The strong
roots may penetrate fragile soil cracks in underlying bedrock and anchor
the soil however when they are removed, the initial situation will be
interrupted and resulted in ground motions that could lead to landslides

• Mining – An operation that use blasting techniques often cause other

areas that are at the risk of sliding to slide due to vibrations under the soil
 LANDSLIDES PREVENTION METHOD

Construct Retaining Walls

• A solid, well-designed retaining should be made of sturdy materials such as

masonry, brick, stone or steel
• Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain the soil
• Areas with steep slopes are very suitable to construct a retaining wall or
where the landscape needs to be shaped severely for construction or
engineering projects
• There are various ways of constructing a retaining wall, the most common
types being:
o Gravity walls: they manage to resist pressure from behind due to their
own mass
o Piling walls: made of steel they are usually used in tight spaces with
soft soil having 2/3 of the wall beneath the ground
o Cantilever walls: they have a large structural footing and convert
horizontal pressure from behind the wall into vertical pressure on the
ground below
o Anchored walls: they use cables or other stays anchored in the rock
or soil behind to increase resistance
• The type of wall that will be used depends on the circumstances of every
case. Soil type, slope angle, groundwater characteristics and other specifics
will be considered before deciding on the proper solution
• Retaining walls have been found to be a very efficient solution against
landslides