Suggested Guidelines for Investigating Land Subsidence and Earth Fissure Hazards in Arizona

These guidelines provide professionals evaluating site-specific conditions in areas known or suspected to be subsiding with a standardized minimum level of investigation for land-subsidence and earth-fissure hazards. The guidelines do not include systematic descriptions of all available investigative techniques or topics, nor is it suggested that all techniques or topics are appropriate for every project. Variations in site conditions, project scope, economics, and level of acceptable risk may require that some topics be addressed in greater detail than is outlined in these guidelines. However, all elements of these guidelines should be considered in comprehensive land-subsidence and earth-fissure hazard investigations, and may be applied to any project site, large or small. These guidelines are largely modified from draft recommendations prepared by Lund and others (2010). That draft, in turn, was developed using existing guidelines for preparing engineering geologic reports in Utah (Utah Section of the Association of Engineering Geologist, 1986), guidelines for evaluating surface-fault-rupture and land-subsidence hazards in Nevada (NESC, 1998), and guidelines for evaluating surface-fault rupture in California and Utah (California Geological Survey, 2002; Christenson and others, 2003), with additions and comments from various professionals involved in land-subsidence and earth-fissure investigations.Documents in the AZGS Documents Repository collection are made available by the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact azgs-info@email.arizona.edu)