Results of Hydrologic Monitoring on Landslide-prone Coastal Bluffs near Mukilteo, Washington

A hydrologic monitoring network was installed to investigate landslide hazards affecting the railway corridor along the eastern shore of Puget Sound between Seattle and Everett, near Mukilteo, Washington. During the summer of 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey installed instrumentation at four sites to measure rainfall and air temperature every 15 minutes. Two of the four sites are installed on contrasting coastal bluffs, one landslide scarred and one vegetated. At these two sites, in addition to rainfall and air temperature, volumetric water content, pore pressure, soil suction, soil temperature (via hydrologic instrumentation), and barometric pressure were measured every 15 minutes. The instrumentation was designed to supplement landslide-rainfall thresholds developed by the U.S. Geological Survey with a long-term goal of advancing the understanding of the relationship between landslide potential and hydrologic forcing along the coastal bluffs. Additionally, the system was designed to function as a prototype monitoring system to evaluate criteria for site selection, instrument selection, and placement of instruments.

Two files are included with this release. A comma separated value (csv) file contains monitoring data for the time-periods described by its name, for example 20150711_20160809.csv contains data for the period between July 11, 2015 and August 9, 2016. A read-me file (readme.doc) describes the sensor naming convention used for column names in the data files.

The following citation relates to a report that provides background information and is intended to accompany this data release.
Smith, J.B.; Baum, R.L.; Mirus, Benjamin B.; Michel, Abigail R.; Stark, Ben, 2017, Results of Hydrologic Monitoring on Landslide-Prone Coastal Bluffs Near Mukilteo Washington: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2017-1095, 50 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20171095