News-reported landslide impacts in Southeast Alaska, 1990-2024

Landslides are common across Southeast Alaska (SEAK) and have caused damages and fatalities in populated areas. Better understanding of landslide triggering conditions and impacts can inform risk reduction strategies and alerting efforts. Landslide inventory data with high temporal resolution (weekly to hourly) are needed to quantify these conditions. Local news sources are a source of landslide information that often report both timing and impacts. Here, we present an inventory of 162 news-reported landslides in SEAK between 1990 and 2024. This data release focuses on landslides reported near seven population centers with long-term meteorological records: Juneau, Haines, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Prince of Wales Island, and Ketchikan. The inventory was created by searching for the keyword “landslide” in 13 different local news sources. It provides the minimum and maximum date and time of occurrence for each landslide, the closest population center, latitude and longitude, an estimated location accuracy, a description of the location, the landslide type, the potential trigger, and a description of the size and initiation point of each landslide. Where available, the number of fatalities and buildings damaged and a description of the impacts are documented. The primary news source, publication date, and links to news article(s) describing each event are also included. This data release complements existing sources of landslide information in SEAK, for example the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities Geo Event Tracker (Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, 2022), the U.S. Forest Service Tongass National Forest Landslide Inventory (U.S. Forest Service, 2024), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Events Database (National Centers for Environmental Information, 2020), by providing high temporal resolution and impact descriptions for many of the reported events. This data release includes: (1) a table documenting each landslide with its attributes (SEAK_News_Reported_Landslides.csv) (2) a table with data field definitions and descriptions SEAK_News_Reported_Landslides_Definitions.csv Disclaimer: Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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