Description: Inventories of rock falls and other types of landslides are valuable tools for improving understanding of these events. For example, detailed information on rock fallsincitical for indentifying mechanisms that trigger rock falls, for quantifying the susceptibility of different cliffs to rock falls, and for developing magnitude-frequency relations. Further, inventories can assist in quantifying the relative hazard and risk posed by these events over both short and long time scales.This data set represents the rock fall inventory database for Yosemite National Park, California. The inventory database documents 1489 events spanning the period 1857-2020. Rock falls, rock slides, and other forms of slope movement represent a series natural hazard in Yosemite National Park. Rock-fall hazard and risk are particularly relevant in Yosemite Valley, where glacially steepened granitic cliffs approach 1 km in heigh and where the majority of the approximately 4 million yearly visitors to the park congregate. In addition to damaging roads, trails, and other facilities, rock falls and other slope movement events have killed 16 people and injured at least 90 people in the park since the first documented rock fall in 1857.A report, "Historical Rock Falls in Yosemite National Park,California (1857-2020)", describes each of the organizational categories in the database, including event location, type of slope movement, date, volume, relative, size, probable trigger, impact to humans, narrative description, references, and environmental conditions. Previous versions of the database are available by accessing the following publications: Wieczorek et al. (1992), Wieczorek and Synder (2004), and Stock et al. (2013).
Copyright Text: NPS, Yosemite National Park, RMS, PSLE, USGS