Influences of earthquake motion on slopes in a hilly area during the Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake, 2004

The Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake in 2004 was a large-scale earthquake during which a large number of landslides occurred. In this study, we used numerical analysis to investigate the relationship between the obtained distribution of the earthquake vibrations as influenced by the topology of the mountain and the landslides that occurred during the earthquake. The results showed that the source areas of the large scale landslides distributed on mountain ridges. The landslides located in areas where there was great seismic acceleration and a large shear strain distributed. As a result, the slope-scale distribution of the earthquake vibrations affected on the occurrences of landslides.