Articles

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0444-1

Earthquake-triggered 2018 Palu Valley landslides

enabled by wet rice cultivation
Kyle Bradley   1,2*, Rishav Mallick   1,2, Harisma Andikagumi   3, Judith Hubbard   1,2, Ella Meilianda4,
Adam Switzer   1,2, Nairong Du1, Gilles Brocard   5, Dedy Alfian4, Benazir Benazir4, Guangcai Feng6,
Sang-Ho Yun7, Jedrzej Majewski1,2, Shengji Wei1,2 and Emma M. Hill   1,2

The death toll and economic impact of an earthquake can be greatly exacerbated if seismic ground shaking triggers landslides.
Earthquake-triggered landslides typically occur in two different contexts: localized failure of steep slopes and resulting land-
slides that pose a major threat to life in areas below; and lateral spreading of nearly flat sediment plains due to shaking-induced
liquefaction, which can damage large areas of critical infrastructure. Unexpected catastrophic landsliding triggered by the
28 September 2018 earthquake at Palu, Indonesia did not occur in either typical context, but produced both destructive out-
comes. Here, we show that alluvial ground failure in the Palu Valley was a direct consequence of irrigation creating a new liq-
uefaction hazard. Aqueduct-supported cultivation, primarily of wet rice, raised the water table to near ground level, saturating
sandy alluvial soils that liquefied in response to strong ground shaking. Large-displacement lateral spreads occurred on slopes
of 1°. Slopes steeper than 1.5° sourced long-runout landslides and debris flows that swept through villages occupying the gentler
slopes below. The resulting damage and loss of life would probably not have occurred in the absence of a raised water table.
Earthquake-triggered landsliding of gentle, irrigated alluvial slopes is an under-recognized, but avoidable, anthropogenic hazard.

O
n 28 September 2018, an earthquake of moment magnitude 7.5
was produced by super-shear rupture of the Palu-Koro Fault
System in central Sulawesi, Indonesia1,2. This plate boundary
strike-slip fault zone defines the western edge of the Palu Valley3 (Fig.
1a) and has a high slip rate of ~42 mm yr–1(ref. 4). Strong ground shak-
ing (Modified Mercalli Intensity of 8.0–8.5) and high peak ground
accelerations (0.5–0.6g) were probably experienced within the valley
during the earthquake5,6. Although initial damage reports focused on
the dramatic effects of rapid tsunami inundation in Palu City, it soon
became clear that landsliding within the alluvial valley to the south
was also responsible for a large number of the 4,340 estimated casual-
ties7. While earthquake-triggered slope failures are widely recognized
as a hazard to both life and property8–11, their occurrence along the
gentle slopes of the Palu Valley was surprising because this area had
not previously been identified as a site of major landslide potential.
Irrigated agriculture in the naturally dry Palu Valley is important
to the regional economy. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
the Dutch colonial government of the East Indies constructed mod-
ern tropical irrigation systems as part of its Ethical Policy initiative12.
This effort centred on the construction of aqueducts to increase the
reliability and productivity of wet rice cultivation and thus allow
double cropping13. The unlined Gumbasa aqueduct was completed
in 1913 (ref. 14) and carried diverted river water across the wide and
gentle eastern slopes of the valley for over a century, until its partial
destruction during the 28 September earthquake (Fig. 1b).
Landsliding at Palu
The Gumbasa aqueduct defines the upper elevation of earthquake-
triggered landsliding in the eastern Palu Valley. Mapped surface
fractures and pooled water on the surfaces of three distinct allu-
vial fans indicate the occurrence of massive slope failures below the
aqueduct (Fig. 1b). The dry land above the aqueduct shows little
deformation and no evidence of liquefaction. Quantitative map-
ping of deformation within the eastern Palu Valley slide area, using
manual tracking of identifiable objects in high-resolution satellite
imagery and correlation of 3-m-resolution orthorectified Planet
satellite images15–17 (Fig. 2a) captured immediately before and after
the earthquake, shows that large areas of mostly intact land trans-
lated down surface slopes of approximately 1°. Within these areas, at
least 14.5 km2 of land moved >2 m, at least 4.5 km2 moved >5 m and
coherent displacements locally exceeded 15 m. This deformation is
of a similar scale and magnitude to well-documented earthquake-
triggered coastal lateral spreads18,19, but occurred in an unprec-
edented alluvial fan setting.
The greatest loss of life due to landsliding at Palu can probably
be attributed to four long-runout landslides, which moved semi-
coherent material hundreds of metres downslope and also gener-
ated voluminous debris flows that travelled up to 5 km. Three of
these landslides originated as lateral spreads directly beneath the
Gumbasa aqueduct, at Petobo, Sidera and Sibulaya (Fig. 1a,d–f).
The fourth slide occurred at Balaroa in western Palu City (Fig. 1c).
While the breakaway of the Balaroa slide has been interpreted as
falling along a secondary fault strand2, we note that the breakaway
coincides with a water channel and a prominent downslope tran-
sition from dry land at higher elevation to lush city land below
(Fig. 1c). The downslope displacements north and south of the
Balaroa slide2 most probably represent additional ground failures.
Notably, all of the four long-runout landslides initiated only where

Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore. 2Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological
1

University, Singapore, Singapore. 3Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, Durham, UK. 4Tsunami Disaster and Mitigation Research Center,
Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. 5School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 6School of Geosciences
and Info-Physics, Central South University, Changsha, China. 7Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. *e-mail:
kbradley@ntu.edu.sg

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Articles Nature Geoscience

a b
Slope >1.5° Slide areas
Fracture
0° S 119.92˚
Surface water
c
0.92° S
100
20

Gu 0 km 1
Sulawesi m 80 90
ba
sa

70

60

30
0.93° S

50

40
60 70
M w 7.5
Petobo slide
50

Slo
p
0.94° S 0.5 km

e>
1.5
40
d

110
100
80
60

90
70
50
80
Debris flow

40
0.95° S
60 70
30
Palu-Koro

50
119.75° E

120.0° E

0.96° S
Fault

1 km
Alluvial fan
40
e

Aqued
Slope <1° 90
80

80
0.97° S
uct

90
60

70

100
Ba Palu

110
60 70

50
Pe
Slope >1.5°

Sid 0.98° S Sidera slide

40 1 km
Sib
Debris flow f
0.99° S
80
60

70

100
50

90
70

1° S
80

1.01° S
1.5° S 119.9° E 119.91° E 119.92° E 119.93° E 0.5 km

Fig. 1 | Earthquake-triggered landsliding in the Palu Valley, Sulawesi, Indonesia. a, Surface rupture of 2018 Palu earthquake2. Stars denote locations of
four long-runout landslides (Ba, Balaroa; Pe, Petobo; Sid, Sidera; Sib, Sibulaya). Mw, moment magnitude. b, Map of landslides, debris flows, distributed
surface fracturing and surface water beneath the Gumbasa aqueduct in the eastern Palu Valley (black-bordered rectangle in a). Elevation contours are
labelled in metres. c–f, Long-runout landslides were sourced from lateral spreads in irrigated areas with surface slopes >1.5°: Balaroa landslide (c), Petobo
landslide (d), Sidera landslide (e) and Sibulaya landslide (f). GMT34 was used to produce this and other figures. Credit: b–f, OpenStreetMap35

the surface slope exceeded 1.5°, and their breakaway zones all coin- mainly occurred in areas of dense fields and paddies with little
cide with a water channel marking a downslope transition from dry intervening forestland (Fig. 2a). Irrigated fields and paddies below
to irrigated land. the aqueduct are zones of extensional strain, while an area of mixed
forest and irrigated fields that transitions downslope into densely
Relationship between land use and landsliding planted forest is contractional (Fig. 2c). Swath profiles of surface
A shallow water table was the primary factor that created lateral displacement coloured by classified land use show that the lateral
spreading and landsliding hazards, which were subsequently trig- spread is a composite slide (Fig. 3). Areas of paddy cultivation
gered by the 2018 earthquake. We developed a detailed map of agri- formed local breakaways that integrated to produce higher displace-
cultural land use in the eastern Palu Valley (Fig. 2a), and compared ments, while areas of forestland or mixed forests and fields were
it to surface displacements derived from pixel correlation (Fig. 2b). contractional even in areas that moved >5 m.
This analysis shows that land use type is directly correlated with The spatial distribution of sliding is explained by an irrigation
ground surface displacement and deformation. Lateral spreading system and cultivation scheme that locally raised the water table.

936 Nature Geoscience | VOL 12 | NOVEMBER 2019 | 935–939 | www.nature.com/naturegeoscience

Nature Geoscience Articles
0.92° S
a Gu b Gu c Gu
0 km 1 0 km 1 0 km 1
m m m
ba ba ba
sa sa sa
0.93° S

Petobo slide
0.94° S

0.95° S Profi Profi

le 1 le 1

Smaller slides
0.96° S

Aqued

Aqued

Aqued
0.97° S
uct

uct

uct
ile 2 ile 2
0.98° S Prof Prof
lide
ra s
Side
0.99° S

1° S

1.01° S
119.9° E 119.91° E 119.92° E 119.93° E 119.9° E 119.91° E 119.92° E 119.93° E 119.9° E 119.91° E 119.92° E 119.93° E

200 m
Urban Forest Dry Irrigated 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 −6 −3 0 3 6
Horizontal displacement (m) Dilatational strain (%)

Fig. 2 | Landsliding was intimately related to agricultural land use and irrigation. a, Classified land use showing irrigated fields below the Gumbasa
aqueduct, dry land above the aqueduct and a lower region of agricultural forest and paddies. b, Horizontal displacements estimated from sub-pixel
correlation of pre- and post-event Planet satellite imagery (red shading). Black vectors are manual object tracking of DigitalGlobe imagery, logarithmic
scale. Large landslides and debris flows are masked. c, Dilatational strain map. Extension occurred in irrigated land along and below the aqueduct;
contraction occurred within mixed forest and fields above a downslope transition to dense forest. See Fig. 3 legend for explanation of Profiles 1 and 2.
Credit: a, OpenStreetMap; b,c, Planet Labs, Inc

While wet rice cultivation in sandy alluvium requires a high rate of
groundwater recharge by irrigation20, coconut palm requires only
moderate watering21. Because large slide displacements can occur
only where a sufficiently thick liquefied layer exists, these spatial
variations in groundwater level exerted a fundamental control over
the triggered landsliding at Palu. In particular, lateral spreading and
landsliding occurred only in areas that exceeded a critical density
of flood-irrigated land (Fig. 2a,b). Paddies and fish ponds located
downslope of the slide toe probably also had a shallow water table,
and locally exhibit surface signs of liquefaction but show no coher-
ent horizontal displacement indicating ground failure (Fig. 1b). This
suggests that either the paddy areas were stabilized by the surround-
ing, less-irrigated, land or that finer-grained sediments in a more
distal fan setting were less susceptible to widespread liquefaction.
Anthropogenic hazard from irrigation
The economy of Palu is highly dependent on continuous irrigation
and is likely to remain so. Reconstruction in the aftermath of the
28 September earthquake must therefore recognize both the require-
ment for, and ongoing hazard associated with, irrigation. While the
near-term probability of another large rupture of this segment of the
Palu-Koro Fault has probably decreased in the wake of the recent
earthquake, aftershocks and ruptures of the main fault further south
are now more likely due to crustal static stress changes22. In addi-
tion, active fault strands that may directly underlie the eastern Palu
Valley23 are another potential source of local strong ground shak-
ing that could induce liquefaction. While historical earthquakes
have occurred on the Palu-Koro Fault system far north and south of
the Palu Valley (1907, surface-wave magnitude (Ms) 6.3; 1909, Ms
7.3; 1927, Ms 7.4; 1968, Ms 7.4)3,23, there is no historical record of
a moderate to large earthquake within the Palu Valley before 2018.
Given this lack of information, the high slip rate of faults in the
region is sufficient reason to expect a high likelihood of moderate
or large earthquakes in the Palu Valley going forward. Furthermore,
while the physical process of bulk volume reduction during ground
shaking might intuitively suggest that the hazard of liquefaction has
been reduced within the 2018 slide areas, re-liquefaction has been
observed over multiple earthquake cycles elsewhere24 and cannot be
ruled out at Palu.
Because lateral spreading typically affects lowland areas with
a regional water table that can be drawn down only locally, engi-
neering solutions to mitigate liquefaction hazard are expensive
and invasive25. The naturally drained alluvial setting of the Palu
Valley may offer more easily achievable solutions. Lateral spreads
in sandy alluvial fan settings are rare because the water table often
lies well below the ground surface. Sufficient lowering of the water
table beneath alluvial slopes of the Palu Valley toward its natural
level could reduce the hazard of lateral spreading and landsliding
(Fig. 4). Breaking the lateral connectivity of saturated liquefiable
strata can be accomplished while maintaining agricultural output.

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Articles Nature Geoscience

Profile 1 100
15
file
Fan pro

Elevation (m)
10 80

DH (m)
Slide toe Aqueduct

5 60

0 40
0 1 2 3
Distance (km)

Profile 2 100
15
file
Fan pro

Elevation (m)
10 80
DH (m)

Slide toe
Aqueduct
5 60

0 40
0 1 2 3
Distance (km)

Forest Field/paddy Urban Dry land

Fig. 3 | Profiles across liquefaction-induced landslides showing relationship with agricultural land use. Classified land use pixels (Fig. 2a) are projected
onto the profiles and plotted by their horizontal displacement, DH, from pixel correlation (Fig. 2b). The black line shows the median displacement. Profile
locations and swath widths are given in Fig. 2a,b. Displacement is correlated with land use type. Paddy areas form breakaway zones and forest areas form
compressive zones. Profile 1 crosses a single slide with a breakaway zone at the Gumbasa aqueduct, while Profile 2 shows a composite slide with multiple
breakaways, including one at the aqueduct.

a
Existing hazard Aqueduct alluvial fans before the Palu earthquake were all minor29,30. The
unexpected Palu landslides clearly indicate the need for more pro-
Lateral spreading
Dry
active assessment of anthropogenic hazards from irrigation. Rice
agriculture has been a major driver of new irrigation projects in
Asia, and global demand for rice is expected to continue to rise31.
quefa
ction The development of new irrigation infrastructure over at least one
cted li
Dry Conne Groundwater century has almost certainly created new and unappreciated land-
?
slide hazards in seismically active areas. Aqueducts have been con-
structed along the steep walls of fault-bounded, pull-apart basins
b
Potential mitigation scenario Aqueduct along the Sumatran Fault in Indonesia32. Irrigation development
Stable land in Myanmar, including construction of large reservoirs and aque-
Dry ducts along the Sagaing Fault, has brought continuous watering to
previously seasonal rice-growing areas33. The Palu landslides high-
light the dual hazard of earthquake-triggered lateral spreading and
faction
related landsliding in areas of wet rice cultivation on gentle alluvial
d lique
Dry
Compa
rtmente
Groundwater
slopes, which must be taken into account for both existing and new
irrigation projects.

Fig. 4 | Anthropogenic liquefaction and landslide hazard at Palu, and one Online content
potential mitigation approach. a, Schematic representation of irrigation- Any methods, additional references, Nature Research reporting
created liquefaction hazard and earthquake-triggered lateral spreads in summaries, source data, statements of code and data availability and
the eastern Palu Valley. b, Liquefaction hazard can be mitigated, at least associated accession codes are available at https://doi.org/10.1038/
partially, while maintaining the economic benefit of aqueduct irrigation, s41561-019-0444-1.
by reducing the lateral connectivity of saturated sandy layers below the
aqueduct. Received: 2 January 2019; Accepted: 2 August 2019;
Published online: 27 September 2019

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Acknowledgements
Generic Mapping Tools34 was used to produce the figures. This research was supported
by the Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University and the
National Research Foundation Singapore and the Singapore Ministry of Education under
the Research Centres of Excellence initiative. J.H. was supported by a Singapore National
Research Foundation Fellowship (award no. NRF-NRFF2013-06). Part of the research
was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology,
under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This work
comprises Earth Observatory of Singapore contribution no. 230.
Author contributions
K.B., R.M. and J.H. led the analysis and produced the primary results and figures. K.B.
led the writing and all authors contributed to writing and editing the manuscript. D.A.,
E.M., J.M., A.S., B.B. and G.B. made field observations of the landslides and liquefaction.
K.B., R.M., J.H., G.F., S.W. and N.D. produced the displacement maps and uncertainty
analyses. K.B. and H.A. mapped liquefaction features and produced the land use
classification. E.M.H. and S.-H.Y. provided insight into damage mapping, recovery and
ground surface deformation at Palu.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Supplementary information is available for this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/
s41561-019-0444-1.
Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to K.B.
Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affiliations.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2019
939
Articles
Methods
Geological mapping from remote sensing. We mapped ground surface ruptures
and liquefaction features using post-event, high-resolution DigitalGlobe satellite
imagery in Google Earth Pro. In areas of very high rupture density, fault traces
were mapped schematically to capture the geometry and extent of fracturing.
Surface traces are likely to have been missed due to vegetative or unfavourable
lighting. Standing water, light-coloured sand blows and dark-coloured saturated
surface soil were also manually mapped by the same method.
Land use classification. We classified land use in the study area using four
categories: (1) urban land consisting mainly of buildings, (2) irrigated fields and
paddies, (3) forested land and (4) non-irrigated dry land, both cultivated and
uncultivated. Category 1 was classified using the hyperspectral band of pre-event
Planet imagery and building footprints from OpenStreetMap35 surrounded by a
10-m buffer. Categories 2 and 3 were mapped by manual inspection of pre- and
post-event DigitalGlobe imagery in Google Earth Pro, supplemented by tree
canopy mapping using DEMNAS topography data (see following section) and
validated using post-event DigitalGlobe imagery to update areas of recent land use
change. Category 4 was classified by visual inspection of pre-event DigitalGlobe
imagery in Google Earth Pro.
Topography of the slide area. In the study area, and particularly along lower
alluvial slopes, remotely sensed topographic data are contaminated by a dense
canopy of agricultural trees, primarily coconut palm. These tall (>20 m) trees are
planted sufficiently densely that digital elevation maps (DEMs) derived from radar
and optical datasets exhibit a patchwork of excessively high areas interspersed
with the true ground level. This gives the false impression of a lower fan surface
that is disrupted by erosional or tectonic features, when in reality the fan surface is
smooth. We sampled the 8.5-m-resolution Indonesian national DEM (DEMNAS)
at 4,132 low areas corresponding with visually identified fields and paddies,
and calculated an inverse-distance-weighted height field using these points. We
subtracted this from the original DEM to obtain a ground surface model and a
vegetation height map. The height map was used to further refine our visual land
classification.
Displacement mapping. North–south and east–west displacements were estimated
using sub-pixel correlation with the freely available and open source software
MicMac (v.1.0.beta13). We used orthorectified 3-m-resolution Planet satellite
imagery captured on 27 September 2018 and 1 October 2018 projected into a
WGS1984 UTM50S (EPSG:32750) grid. We used a 9 × 9 pixel correlation window
and a preferred search azimuth of 270°. Larger correlation windows were tested
but did not improve the result markedly. The resulting north–south and east–
west displacement fields were de-trended to minimize the average displacement
value upslope of the aqueduct and to remove artefacts resulting from imperfect
original referencing of pre- and post-event satellite images. The magnitude of this
correction was between 1.1 pixels along the western edge of the study area and 0.3
pixels along the eastern edge.
Total displacements of identifiable ground-level features (arrows in Fig. 2b)
were manually mapped using high-resolution DigitalGlobe imagery in Google
Earth Pro, by comparison of pre-earthquake (19 May 2018) and post-earthquake
(2 October 2018) images. A uniform shift correction was applied to account for
systematic misregistration of pre-and post-event images, by minimizing
the displacement of points located in undisturbed areas above the aqueduct.
A total of 1,561 points were measured, distributed broadly within and around
the deformed region.
Nature Geoscience
Uncertainty analysis. We assessed the uncertainty of the pixel correlation
displacements by comparison to colocated manual object tracking displacements
(Supplementary Fig. 1).
For areas with displacements of ≲20 m, the sub-pixel correlation reliably
captures the land movement (the pixel correlation displacement values are biased
12 ± 3% lower than manual object tracking). We estimated the noise threshold
(lowest useful value) of the pixel correlation displacements by determining
the proportion of pixels within the non-irrigated land use class exceeding a
displacement threshold (Supplementary Fig. 2). For threshold values of 1.5 and
2 m, 13 and 4%, respectively, of pixels in non-irrigated areas exceed the threshold.
Probability distribution functions of north–south and east–west displacements
for pixels classified as non-irrigated land also indicate a noise level of ~2 for each
component (Supplementary Fig. 3). Thus, we interpret that displacement values
above ~2 m reliably represent movement, whereas values below ~2 m are within the
noise. This result is consistent with previous estimates of the accuracy threshold for
displacements obtained from pixel correlation of Planet imagery17.
To estimate the uncertainties in the area of the ground involved in landsliding,
we added Gaussian noise to the displacement field proportional to the probability
density functions we estimated for each component (Supplementary Fig. 3). We
used 1,000 realizations of this process (Monte Carlo sampling) to estimate the area
that moved farther than a minimum threshold distance (Supplementary Fig. 4).
Our image covers an area of ~62 km2, of which 14.5–20.3 km2 was displaced
horizontally by 2–20 m. At least 14.0 km2 moved >2 m, and at least 4.6 km2
moved >5 m (Supplementary Fig. 4).
Strain calculation. Because strain gradients are low in the region where the pixel
correlation provides detailed displacement maps, we adopt an infinitesimal strain
formulation to map regions of horizontal extension and contraction. We calculate
strain using the n-nearest neighbour method. We define a grid of (xg,yg) 100 × 200
points, equally spaced over the region in which we have the MicMac displacement
field (u,v) defined for every (x,y) location. We compute the horizontal
displacement gradient tensor du , dv , du , dv from the displacement field (u,v) at each
dx dx dy dy
grid point (xg,yg) using least squares. We use n = 10 nearest data points assuming
that the strain field within the polygon created by the sorted stations is uniform.
We extract the symmetric part of the displacement gradient tensor as the strain
tensor ϵxx , ϵxy , ϵyy, and we rotate the strain tensor to obtain the principal strains
( ) +ϵ
ϵxx + ϵyy ϵxx − ϵyy 2
ϵp = ± 2
. The magnitude of the trace of the principal strain
2 2 xy
tensor (the first invariant) does not exceed 0.06 (6%).
Data availability
The data required to reproduce our conclusions are available at the NTU Data
Repository (https://researchdata.ntu.edu.sg/). The data included are: horizontal
displacements from object tracking and pixel correlation, pixel correlation
strain maps, land use classification and mapped geological features. MicMac
displacement maps can be found at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/VTBCFL. Strain
rasters can be found at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/PNYMEQ. Object tracking
displacements can be found at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/WPDFX2. Geological
feature KMZ files can be found at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/BZNMU0. The land
use classification map can be found at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/AFWLAR.
Code availability
The MATLAB function used to calculate horizontal strain components is available
at the NTU Data Repository: https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/FLOXET.
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