Large earthquakes in mountainous regions may trigger thousands of landslides, some active for years. We analysed the changes in landslide activity near the epicentre of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake by generating five landslide inventories for different years through stereoscopic digital visual image interpretation. From May 2008 to April 2015, 660 new landslides occurred outside the co-seismic landslide areas. In April 2015, the number of active landslides had gone down to 66, less than 1 % of the co-seismic landslides, but still much higher than the pre-earthquake levels. We expect that the landslide activity will continue to decay, but may be halted if extreme rainfall events occur.

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake lead to various complex multi-hazard chains that included seismically triggered landslide initiation, landslide runout, river damming, dam breaching, and flooding. The modeling of the interactions between such hazardous processes is challenging due to the complexity and uncertainty. Here we present an event-based physically based model that is able to simulate multi-hazard land surface process chains within a single unified simulation. The final model is used to simulate a multi-hazard chain event in the Hongchun watershed, where co-seismic landslides led to a landslide dam and, 2 years later, a debris flow that breached the landslide dam. While most aspects of the multi-hazard chain are predicted well, the correct prediction of slope failures remains the biggest challenge. Although the results should be treated carefully, the development of such a model provides a significant progress in the applicability of multi-hazard chain simulations.

Mass movements such as debris flows and landslides differ in behaviour due to their material properties and internal forces. Models employ generalized multi-phase flow equations to adaptively describe these complex flow types. Such models commonly assume unstructured and fragmented flow, where internal cohesive strength is insignificant. In this work, existing work on two-phase mass movement equations are extended to include a full stress–strain relationship that allows for runout of (semi-)structured fluid–solid masses. The work provides both the three-dimensional equations and depth-averaged simplifications. The equations are implemented in a hybrid material point method (MPM), which allows for efficient simulation of stress–strain relationships on discrete smooth particles. Using this framework, the developed model is compared to several flume experiments of clay blocks impacting fixed obstacles. Here, both final deposit patterns and fractures compare well to simulations. Additionally, numerical tests are performed to showcase the range of dynamical behaviour produced by the model. Important processes such as fracturing, fragmentation and fluid release are captured by the model. While this provides an important step towards complete mass movement models, several new opportunities arise, such as application to fragmenting mass movements and block slides.