This dataset consists of over 800 field observations of ground failure (landslides, lateral spreading, and liquefaction) and other damage triggered by the 2019-2020 Puerto Rico earthquake sequence. The sequence started with a M4.7 earthquake on 28 December 2019, followed by many more earthquakes, including 15 larger than M5 (as of 7 July 2020). The M6.4 mainshock, which is thought to have triggered much of the observed ground failure, occurred on 7 January 2020. Most field reconnaissance efforts documented here took place as soon as possible after the mainshock, from 12-18 January 2020, to attempt to capture ephemeral data before evidence was destroyed by natural forces or repairs, but observations continued to be made through the end of February 2020. To organize the data, we have assigned each of the ~800 observations to a single ground failure type category that best describes the observation. The observations are symbolized by this main category in the accompanying ArcGIS Online Dashboard to make it easy to visualize and browse the observations. Main categories include lateral spreading, liquefaction, disrupted slides and falls, soil landslides, ground cracks, subsidence, damage, null (no ground failure) and other. We provide specific descriptions of these categories subsequently. The geotagged photos associated with most observation points include additional tags to more completely describe the observation. Many observations are also accompanied by text descriptions made during the field work by the observer. The location of the majority of the points represents the location of the observer/photographer because the coordinates come from geotagged photos and waypoints, but in a few cases, the locations of a distant occurrence of ground failure were estimated by the observer; these cases are noted in the comments. For inventories of landslides and liquefaction where the features are in the location of the occurrence, refer to the landslide inventory and liquefaction inventory that were derived in part from these field observations. The data is available in several file formats. The geodatabase (PR_observations_gdb.zip) includes the point locations along with a relationship class for relating attachments to the points. In the PR2020_observation_data.zip zip file, we also include a stand-alone shapefile (Shapefile/PR_observation_pts.shp) of the point locations. This can be used with the folder of photos (Photos) along with the photo table (Table/photo_table.csv) to relate photos to the shapefile. We were not able to investigate the entirety of the potentially affected area due to access and time restrictions as well as dense vegetation. Instead, the areas we investigated were guided by 1) the USGS ground failure models for the mainshock, 2) early satellite mappings of ground failures by colleagues, 3) reports of ground failure in the news, social media, and from emergency managers passed on to us by colleagues, and 4) reports from local residents and emergency managers in the field. In addition to documenting where ground failure did occur, another primary objective of our work was to document where ground failure did not occur even though susceptible conditions were present (null observations). An observation is categorized as a “Lateral spread” if there was displacement on gentle slopes, (commonly towards a water body and a result of liquefaction) regardless of whether there was sand ejecta or other direct evidence of liquefaction. Liquefaction is reserved for sand boils, fissures with ejecta, and other features that indicate liquefaction occurred but without obvious horizontal displacements towards bodies of water. Ground cracks without any obvious ties to liquefaction or lateral spreading are simply categorized as “Cracks.” Cracks are extensional except when otherwise noted in the “General notes” field. Ambiguous observations, such as crab burrows that were difficult to differentiate from sand boils, are categorized under

This inventory was originally created by Wilson and others (1980) describing the landslides triggered by the M 5.8 Livermore, California earthquake that occurred on 24 January 1980 at 19:00:09 UTC. Care should be taken when comparing with other inventories because different authors use different mapping techniques. This inventory also could be associated with other earthquakes such as aftershocks or triggered events. Please check the author methods summary and the original data source for more information on these details and to confirm the viability of this inventory for your specific use. With the exception of the data from USGS sources, the inventory data and associated metadata were not acquired by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and thus have not been reviewed for accuracy and completeness by the USGS. They are presented as part of this data series for convenience of the user only, as part of an effort to make published ground-failure inventories more accessible from a single aggregated site. No warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

This inventory was originally created by Wilson and others (1980) describing the landslides triggered by the M 5.8 Livermore, California earthquake that occurred on 24 January 1980 at 19:00:09 UTC. Care should be taken when comparing with other inventories because different authors use different mapping techniques. This inventory also could be associated with other earthquakes such as aftershocks or triggered events. Please check the author methods summary and the original data source for more information on these details and to confirm the viability of this inventory for your specific use. With the exception of the data from USGS sources, the inventory data and associated metadata were not acquired by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and thus have not been reviewed for accuracy and completeness by the USGS. They are presented as part of this data series for convenience of the user only, as part of an effort to make published ground-failure inventories more accessible from a single aggregated site. No warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

Here we present an inventory of remotely and field-observed landslides triggered by 2019-2020 Puerto Rico earthquake sequence. The inventory was mapped using pre- and post-event satellite imagery (PR_landslide_inventory_imagery.csv), an extensive collection of field observations (https://doi.org/10.5066/P96QNFMB) and using pre-earthquake lidar as guidance for mapping polygons with more precise locations and geometries (2015 - 2017 USGS Lidar DEM: Puerto Rico dataset). The inventory consists of a shapefile of 309 polygons (PR_landslide_inventory_pts.shp) outlining the source area and deposits together. It also includes a point inventory (PR_landslide_inventory_pts.shp) marking 170 individual displaced boulders that were outside of areas that could be mapped as polygons and 28 points that indicate rock falls for which we did not have sufficient information from imagery or photos to map as polygons. The individual boulders and rock fall points are differentiated from each other by the “Type” attribute field. Most individual boulders were mapped from imagery, while most rock fall points were mapped based on field observations alone (e.g. notes about occurrences without photos) because they were not readily visible in imagery or captured in photos. Most landslides were triggered initially by the largest earthquake, a M6.4 on 7 Jan 2020, and we include an attribute named “Trigger” to differentiate whether we think each landslide was triggered during the mainshock, an aftershock, a foreshock, or whether the trigger is unknown given the data available to us. The trigger attribute field is uncertain because in some instances, smaller rock falls and rock fall areas that did not completely strip the vegetation from the slope were at times obscured by vegetation immediately post-earthquake and were only visible in later satellite imagery once some vegetation began to die. These rock fall runout areas were mapped on imagery from several months after the earthquake (10 April 2020) because their spatial extent was far easier to see once the vegetation had died back sufficiently. We did not have sufficient information on many landslides to classify landslide types accurately, so this is not included as an attribute, however the vast majority were interpreted as rock falls. Only three landslides that we documented occurred solely in soil. More than a third of the rock falls we mapped occurred on artificially altered slopes like road cuts (noted by the attribute field “Cutslope”). The “Massive” attribute indicates whether the landslide appeared to involve a detachment of most of the source area at once, as observed in field photos where possible and imagery where photos were not available. Massive is set to false if the slope failure involves many individual rock detachments while other parts of the source area remained intact. Some large polygons actually represent runout areas over which many individual rocks rolled without involving failure of the entire face of the source area (Massive=False) and should not be interpreted as a single large landslide. While lateral spreading was triggered by this earthquake sequence, we do not include it in this inventory and instead group it with the liquefaction inventory for this event (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9JEN3H2).

Here we present an inventory of remotely and field-observed landslides triggered by 2019-2020 Puerto Rico earthquake sequence. The inventory was mapped using pre- and post-event satellite imagery (PR_landslide_inventory_imagery.csv), an extensive collection of field observations (https://doi.org/10.5066/P96QNFMB) and using pre-earthquake lidar as guidance for mapping polygons with more precise locations and geometries (2015 - 2017 USGS Lidar DEM: Puerto Rico dataset). The inventory consists of a shapefile of 309 polygons (PR_landslide_inventory_pts.shp) outlining the source area and deposits together. It also includes a point inventory (PR_landslide_inventory_pts.shp) marking 170 individual displaced boulders that were outside of areas that could be mapped as polygons and 28 points that indicate rock falls for which we did not have sufficient information from imagery or photos to map as polygons. The individual boulders and rock fall points are differentiated from each other by the “Type” attribute field. Most individual boulders were mapped from imagery, while most rock fall points were mapped based on field observations alone (e.g. notes about occurrences without photos) because they were not readily visible in imagery or captured in photos. Most landslides were triggered initially by the largest earthquake, a M6.4 on 7 Jan 2020, and we include an attribute named “Trigger” to differentiate whether we think each landslide was triggered during the mainshock, an aftershock, a foreshock, or whether the trigger is unknown given the data available to us. The trigger attribute field is uncertain because in some instances, smaller rock falls and rock fall areas that did not completely strip the vegetation from the slope were at times obscured by vegetation immediately post-earthquake and were only visible in later satellite imagery once some vegetation began to die. These rock fall runout areas were mapped on imagery from several months after the earthquake (10 April 2020) because their spatial extent was far easier to see once the vegetation had died back sufficiently. We did not have sufficient information on many landslides to classify landslide types accurately, so this is not included as an attribute, however the vast majority were interpreted as rock falls. Only three landslides that we documented occurred solely in soil. More than a third of the rock falls we mapped occurred on artificially altered slopes like road cuts (noted by the attribute field “Cutslope”). The “Massive” attribute indicates whether the landslide appeared to involve a detachment of most of the source area at once, as observed in field photos where possible and imagery where photos were not available. Massive is set to false if the slope failure involves many individual rock detachments while other parts of the source area remained intact. Some large polygons actually represent runout areas over which many individual rocks rolled without involving failure of the entire face of the source area (Massive=False) and should not be interpreted as a single large landslide. While lateral spreading was triggered by this earthquake sequence, we do not include it in this inventory and instead group it with the liquefaction inventory for this event (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9JEN3H2).

This inventory was originally created by Morton (1971) describing the landslides triggered by a sequence of earthquakes, with the largest being the M 6.6 San Fernando, California earthquake that occurred on 9 February 1971 at 14:00:41 UTC. Care should be taken when comparing with other inventories because different authors use different mapping techniques. This inventory includes landslides triggered by a sequence of earthquakes rather than a single mainshock. Please check the author methods summary and the original data source for more information on these details and to confirm the viability of this inventory for your specific use. With the exception of the data from USGS sources, the inventory data and associated metadata were not acquired by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and thus have not been reviewed for accuracy and completeness by the USGS. They are presented as part of this data series for convenience of the user only, as part of an effort to make published ground-failure inventories more accessible from a single aggregated site. No warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

This inventory was originally created by Morton (1971) describing the landslides triggered by a sequence of earthquakes, with the largest being the M 6.6 San Fernando, California earthquake that occurred on 9 February 1971 at 14:00:41 UTC. Care should be taken when comparing with other inventories because different authors use different mapping techniques. This inventory includes landslides triggered by a sequence of earthquakes rather than a single mainshock. Please check the author methods summary and the original data source for more information on these details and to confirm the viability of this inventory for your specific use. With the exception of the data from USGS sources, the inventory data and associated metadata were not acquired by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and thus have not been reviewed for accuracy and completeness by the USGS. They are presented as part of this data series for convenience of the user only, as part of an effort to make published ground-failure inventories more accessible from a single aggregated site. No warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.

Earthquake-triggered ground-failure, such as landsliding and liquefaction, can contribute significantly to losses, but our current ability to accurately include them in earthquake hazard analyses is limited. The development of robust and transportable models requires access to numerous inventories of ground failure triggered by earthquakes that span a broad range of terrains, shaking characteristics, and climates. We present an openly accessible, centralized earthquake-triggered ground-failure inventory repository in the form of a ScienceBase Community to provide open access to these data, and help accelerate progress. The Community hosts digital inventories created by both USGS and non-USGS authors. We present the original digital inventory files (when available) as well as an integrated database with uniform attributes. We also summarize the mapping methodology and level of completeness as reported by the original authors for each inventory. This document describes the steps taken to collect, process, and compile the inventories and the process for adding additional ground-failure inventories to the ScienceBase Community in the future.

Earthquake-triggered ground-failure, such as landsliding and liquefaction, can contribute significantly to losses, but our current ability to accurately include them in earthquake hazard analyses is limited. The development of robust and transportable models requires access to numerous inventories of ground failure triggered by earthquakes that span a broad range of terrains, shaking characteristics, and climates. We present an openly accessible, centralized earthquake-triggered ground-failure inventory repository in the form of a ScienceBase Community to provide open access to these data, and help accelerate progress. The Community hosts digital inventories created by both USGS and non-USGS authors. We present the original digital inventory files (when available) as well as an integrated database with uniform attributes. We also summarize the mapping methodology and level of completeness as reported by the original authors for each inventory. This document describes the steps taken to collect, process, and compile the inventories and the process for adding additional ground-failure inventories to the ScienceBase Community in the future.

This inventory was originally created by Keefer and Manson (1998) describing the landslides triggered by the M 6.9 Loma Prieta, California earthquake that occurred on 18 October 1989 at 00:04:15 UTC. Care should be taken when comparing with other inventories because different authors use different mapping techniques. This inventory also could be associated with other earthquakes such as aftershocks or triggered events. Please check the author methods summary and the original data source for more information on these details and to confirm the viability of this inventory for your specific use. With the exception of the data from USGS sources, the inventory data and associated metadata were not acquired by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and thus have not been reviewed for accuracy and completeness by the USGS. They are presented as part of this data series for convenience of the user only, as part of an effort to make published ground-failure inventories more accessible from a single aggregated site. No warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the display or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty.