ABSTRACT
Land-use planning and land management in many areas requires large area or regional landslide-susceptibility evaluation. This is especially true of federally administered wildlands in the western United States. Landslides are an increasingly important factor as the demand for roads, structures, recreational facilities, and mining grows on federally administered wildlands. The matrix-assessment approach to evaluating landslide susceptibility is a quantitative method for establishing an index of instability over an area. It lacks the ability to predict landslide susceptibility in terms of probability or confidence intervals. Matrix assessment for landslide susceptibility is an outgrowth of the ECOSYM project. The matrix assessment approach is designed to satisfy the need for large area or regional landslide-susceptibility information for wildlands management purposes. F. B. Leighton assesses landslide stability as part of evaluation procedures in a land-use planning program.
