NASA radar data shows that a decades-old active landslide area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County has expanded. The analysis, conducted by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, measured the movement of slow-moving landslides and found that they slid toward the ocean by as much as 4 inches per week over a four-week period in fall 2024.
The landslide area, which juts into the Pacific Ocean south of Los Angeles, has been moving for at least six decades and affects hundreds of buildings. The motion accelerated following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and heavy precipitation in early 2024. The data was collected using NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) instrument mounted on a Gulfstream III jet.
The findings indicate that the landslide area has expanded, with parts of it moving at speeds of over 10 cm per week. This poses significant risks to human life and infrastructure. The data is part of a package of analyses by the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team, which also used data from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1A/B satellites.
The ARIA mission aims to investigate the processes and impacts of landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, subsurface fluid movement, and other natural hazards. The upcoming Landslide Climate Change Experiment will use airborne radar to study how extreme wet or dry precipitation patterns influence landslides.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/nasa-radar-imagery-reveals-details-about-los-angeles-area-landslides