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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015
State geologists seek money for landslide mapping
Oregon works to improve
landslide maps
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — State geologists say
Oregon should do more to map past
landslides and areas at risk of slides
in the future.
They’ve asked for more than
COLUMBIA
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TILLAMOOK
MULTNOMAH
next two years, and the propos-
al gained support from Gov. John
In front of disaster
State geologists want to provide
that type of information before di-
saster strikes to land use planners
and other decision makers across
the state, so they can make more in-
formed decisions about future devel-
opment proposals and efforts to pro-
tect existing structures in landslide
hazard areas.
“You really shouldn’t do this
work after a disaster happens,” said
SHERMAN
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CLACKAMAS
POLK
101
BENTON
20
LANE
5
DOUGLAS
COOS
101
JOSEPHINE
CURRY
199
5
Source: Oregon Dept. of Geologly
and Mineral Industries
Bill Burns, an engineering geologist
with the Oregon Department of Ge-
ology and Mineral Industries. “You
want to do it before ... the idea behind
this (proposal) is to try to get in front
of these things, not behind them. It’s
for us to set up a permanent landslide
program.”
READING LIST
WASCO
JEFFERSON
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LINCOLN
GILLIAM
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MARION
JACKSON
in the community. The disaster
prompted then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski
to support better mapping of the area.
HOOD RIVER
YAMHILL
lative session.
If geologists can also win over
lawmakers, they will be able to
expand the use of laser-mapping
technology that has already led to
highly detailed landslide maps for
Astoria, Vernonia, northwest Clacka-
mas County and a couple other areas
of the state.
The technology known as LI-
DAR, which uses light pulses from
equipment on aircraft to collect topo-
graphic data, made a big difference in
mapping Vernonia’s landslides. State
maps previously did not show any
landslides in the community, but with
LIDAR the state was able to locate
Unfortunately, that information
only became available after a series
LIDAR* mapped area
5
Vernonia, Ore.
Oregon is trying to get a better
picture of past landslides, but
so far has only mapped a
small portion of the state
using more accurate, modern
technology known as LIDAR.
The technology has the
potential to vastly improve the
state’s map of areas prone to
landslides. In Vernonia, LIDAR
technology identified more
than 600 previous landslides
in an area where older state
maps had shown none.
*Light Detection and Ranging
Hillary Borrud and Alan Kenaga/
EO Media Group
Unlike with other types of haz-
ardous events, property insurance is
not available for damages caused by
landslides.
“So what we see over and over is
most people when a landslide occurs,
they tend to lose everything,” Burns
told lawmakers during a hearing
earlier this month. “And one of the
biggest investments we make in our
lives is a home, and losing all that is
just devastating.”
Most existing topographic maps
and these are usually accurate within
ogist Vicki McConnell told lawmak-
ers during a December legislative
hearing. LIDAR technology maps
geologic features with a range of ac-
curacy to within a few inches.
“It’s like putting your glasses on
and really being able to see what’s
there,” McConnell said.
The Oregon Department of Land
Conservation and Development has
also proposed hiring a new tempo-
rary employee to help communities
incorporate new landslide data into
their land use planning, and the gov-
ernor has also signaled his support
for that proposal.
Landslides are one of the hazards
Oregon cities and counties must con-
sider in their land use decisions un-
der state law, and employees of the
DLCD are required to work with lo-
cal communities to determine how to
respond to new hazard inventories,
such as landslide data.
More mapping
LIDAR technology was not
widely available at an affordable
said. Since then, state land use
and geology employees have been
working to improve landslide data
and planning on a piecemeal basis,
projects. This allowed the Depart-
ment of Geology and Mineral In-
dustries to develop a methodology
to generate landslide maps from LI-
DAR data.
Oregon has collected LIDAR data
state, although the agency has not
had the resources to map much of
that data.
A grant from the Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency recent-
ly helped the state map and ana-
lyze landslide hazards in northwest
Clackamas County.
In a report completed last year, ge-
area were located on large, deep land-
slides. Matt Crall, a division manager
who works on natural hazards issues
for the Department of Land Conser-
vation and Development, said the
agency is working with Clackamas
County to include the new landslide
data in its planning process.
Similarly, the city of Astoria is
also working to update its landslide
hazard planning documents, to in-
clude the new data. Astoria City
Planner Rosemary Johnson said the
city has contracted with a geologist
to combine state data with the city’s
existing information on landslides
“It’s still in the early stage,” John-
son said.
Next up for the Department of Ge-
ology and Mineral Industries is Mult-
nomah County, for which the agency
just received another federal grant to
do the same type of work as in Astoria
and northwest Clackamas County.
Although the agency already
mapped landslides in Multnomah
County using LIDAR data, geolo-
gists have not yet analyzed risk levels
or generated maps of land susceptible
to future landslides. Burns said this
will likely be an 18-month project.
If lawmakers fund a permanent
landslide hazard program, the state
will no longer have to wait for grants
to map landslide risk. Burns said the
current proposal would allow the
state to set its own priority list to map
certain communities and key areas
such as transportation corridors.
Links to specialized magazines and journals
Diversifying news
Nigel Duara in “The Late Show” in Ore-
gon Humanities magazine (Fall/Winter issue)
writes:
What I can offer is this: as media splinters
for longer periods of time. This time, it was Vice
News with a live-streaming camera and Argus
Streaming News, a news outlet that materialized
wholesale at the (Ferguson, Mo.) protests. There
was Infowars, the right-wing conspiracy theo-
Pulitzer Prize.
We’re going to be in these places, with these
people, affecting the nature of the news. Our
role is absolutely necessary — that’s true. But
it’s also true that we are altering the story as
we report it, and there’s probably no satisfying
solution to this conundrum.http://bit.ly/1xwatnn
AP Photo Riedel
A protester squirts lighter fluid on a police car as the car
windows are shattered near the Ferguson (Mo.) Police De-
partment. The unrest erupted after a white police officer
shot an unarmed black 18-year-old in suburban St. Louis.
In Russia, one is ‘for’ or ‘against’
John Freeman in “Russian Winter” in Opera News, (January) reports:
In Russia today one is either “for” or “against.” As always, in any society, the indifferent middle lends its weight
to the camp that is “for” thus leading to the astronomical 87 percent approval rate that Putin enjoyed in August.
Meanwhile, for their loyal support of Putin’s government, Russian artists can expect to continue receiving perks
at home and the occasional metaphorical kick in the pants abroad. http://bit.ly/1HZxIc4
Submissions by Matt Winters and Steve Forrester.
Daily Mail
Feeling poor?
Although feeling sorry for yourself
is one of the great comforts of human-
kind, when it comes to money we
Americans should count our blessings.
In the past couple years, different
economic analysts have come up with
average annual income for individuals
worldwide. See tinyurl.com/oovskxj,
tinyurl.com/kxgzbv6 and tinyurl.
1 percent in the world as a whole. In
million of them lived in the USA. Little
will have changed since then.
dream for many U.S. citizens in this
age of a national minimum wage of
year ago, Gallup reported based on
different assumptions about who to
include and big information gaps for
much of the world, where there is no ef-
an income, meaning half make more
and half make less.
An online calculator at CNN (ti-
A couple years ago when the pro-
tests were going on about unfair wealth
distribution, with much anger directed
at the richest 1 percent in America, the
UK’s Daily Mail pointed out that an
your income compares with others
around the globe. It rather unrealisti-
would place you among wealthiest
AP Photo/ Maxim Shipenkov, Pool
that much, CNN says your income
about equals that of 17 industrious
Guatemalan farmers.
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From left, Armenian President Serge Sarkisian, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, Kyrgyz Pres-
ident Almazbek Atambayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarba-
yev arrive for the Eurasian Economic Union summit in Moscow’s Kremlin, Russia, Dec. 23.