Dangerous landslides across Africa

Today’s Image of the Day comes courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory and features a look at dangerous landslides that have occurred across Africa.

While landslides in Asia tend to dominate most of the news coverage on the subject, deadly landslides also occur in Africa. A recent NASA study reports that while Africa has had fewer reported landslides than Asia, the ones that do occur have a higher number of casualties.

This graphic illustrates the landslide potential for each region across the continent.  The areas shaded in purple experience a “slight” landslide potential, red and orange areas experience “moderate” potential, and yellow areas experience “severe” potential.

The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states (countries), eight territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.

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By Rory Arnold, Earth.com

Source: NASA Earth Observatory