Alder Creek Landslide

Alder Creek Landslide is located in the Central Coast region of California, within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This moderately sloping, site consists of extremely uneven terrain, containing many deep cracks and folds.

Alder Creek Landslide is dominated by a mixture of consolidated bedrock, boulder fields, and sandy beach and the area surrounding the site is comprised of a mixture of consolidated bedrock, boulder fields, and sandy beach. The primary coastal orientation of this site is southwest.

In the spring of 2011, a series of landslides occurred along Highway 1 south of Big Sur, California where Alder Creek meets the ocean. Surveys were conducted to characterize the intertidal community near the Alder Creek landslide in December 2012, December 2013 and again in January 2015. Because of the gradient of tidal exposure, intertidal areas have strong species zonation patterns. Our surveys were designed to sample the shoreline so that all three zones (high, mid and low) would be evaluated.  This allowed us to determine how the pattern of community composition in each zone varied as a function of distance from the landslide. Survey methods included point contacts in photo plots to determine percent cover of sessile species and mobile invertebrate quadrat counts. These surveys were conducted by University of California Santa Cruz.

For more information about Alder Creek Landslide, please contact Pete Raimondi (raimondi@ucsc.edu).