Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 1311–1330, 2015 www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/15/1311/2015/ doi:10.5194/nhess-15-1311-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Forest harvesting is associated with increased landslide activity during an extreme rainstorm on Vancouver Island, Canada J. N. Goetz1,2, R. H. Guthrie3, and A. Brenning1,2 1University of Waterloo, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 2Friedrich Schiller University, Department of Geography, Jena, Germany 3SNC-Lavalin, Geohazards and Geomorphology, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Correspondence to: J. N. Goetz (
[email protected]) Received: 07 August 2014 – Published in Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 27 August 2014 Revised: 04 June 2015 – Accepted: 08 June 2015 – Published: 22 June 2015 Abstract. Safe operations of forest practices in mountainous 1 Introduction regions require effective development planning to mitigate hazards posed by landslides. British Columbia, Canada, has for the past 2 decades implemented landslide risk manage- Landslides triggered by heavy rainfall are a common occur- ment policies aimed at reducing the impacts of the forestry rence on the Pacific coast of British Columbia (BC), Canada. industry on landslides. Consequently, it is required that tim- The shallow soils and heavy precipitation associated with ber harvesting sites be evaluated for their potential or existing the mountainous terrain of the Pacific Northwest coast cre- impacts on terrain stability. Statistical landslide susceptibil- ate favourable conditions for frequent landslides (Schwab, ity modelling can enhance this evaluation by geographically 1983; Guthrie et al., 2010a). Additionally, commercial for- highlighting potential hazardous areas. In addition, these sta- est management practices, including timber harvesting and tistical models can also improve our understanding of re- forest road construction, contribute to greater landslide fre- gional landslide controlling factors.