ABSTRACT
With the rapid development of highways on the loess area, a large number of loess landslides are encountered and some of them have to be controlled. Loess covers about 631 thousands square kilometers of Chinese land surface, occupies about 4.4 percent of the total land area of China. It mainly distributes in the central area of China, the middle reach of the Yellow River in where the source of Chinese civilization is located. Megascopically, as observing the structures of loess from slip mass through slip zone to slip bed in the excavated investigation pits or the soil core from boreholes, the differences among them are apparent. The slip mass has loose structure and the red paleosol generally is enclosed by yellow-brown loess or inter-enclosed each other. Microscopically, the soil of slip zone shows apparent compacting and distorting effect relative to the natural soil.
