By Mike Lynch
(Feb. 22, 2016) — On a sunny February afternoon, landslide researcher Matt Crawford brushes snow off the solar panels that charge batteries for a landslide monitoring site in the Daniel Boone National Forest. He connects his laptop to a data-logger below the solar panel to download information gathered by instruments since his last visit a month ago. This site on a wooded slope in Pulaski County has turned out to be a good one for the research by Crawford, who works at the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) on the University of Kentucky campus.
“It’s adjacent to a known landslide that has caused damage to several homes,” he said. “It’s accessible from the Forest Service road, and it’s not too steep. We can walk around the site and get work done.”
The monitoring site, on a slope above Lake Cumberland, is representative