Two multi-temporal datasets to track the enhanced landsliding after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

We release two datasets that track the enhanced landsliding induced by the Mw 7.9 2008 Wenchuan earthquake over a portion of the Longmen mountains, at the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau (Sichuan, China). The first dataset is a geo-referenced multi-temporal polygon-based inventory of pre- and coseismic landslides, post-seismic remobilisations of coseismic landslide debris, and post-seismic landslides (new failures). The inventory covers 462.5 km2 in the earthquake’s epicentral area, from 2005 to 2015. The second dataset records the debris flows that occurred from 2008 to 2017 in a larger area (~17,000 km2), together with information on their triggering rainfalls recorded by a network of rain gauges. For some well-monitored cases, we provide detailed information on rainfall, discharge, flow depth and density. The datasets can be used to analyse, at various scales, the patterns of enhanced landsliding caused by the earthquake. They can be compared to inventories relative to past or new earthquakes or other triggers to reveal common or distinctive controlling factors. To our knowledge, no other inventories that track the temporal evolution of earthquake-induced mass wasting have been made freely available thus far. Our datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405490. We also encourage other researchers to share their datasets to facilitate research on post-seismic geological hazards.