ORIGINAL PAPER Inclusion of earthquake strong ground motion in a geographic information system-based landslide susceptibility zonation in Garhwal Himalayas Naveen Pareek • Mukat L. Sharma • Manoj K. Arora • Shilpa Pal Received: 11 February 2012 / Accepted: 9 September 2012 / Published online: 20 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract Garhwal Himalayas are seismically very active and simultaneously suffering from landslide hazards. Landslides are one of the most frequent natural hazards in Himalayas causing damages worth more than one billion US$ and around 200 deaths every year. Thus, it is of paramount importance to identify the landslide causative factors to study them carefully and rank them as per their influence on the occurrence of landslides. The difference image of GIS- derived landslide susceptibility zonation maps prepared for pre- and post-Chamoli earthquake shows the effect of seismic shaking on the occurrence of landslides in the Garhwal Himalaya. An attempt has been made to incorporate seismic shaking parameters in terms of peak ground acceleration with other static landslide causative factors to produce landslide susceptibility zonation map in geographic information system environment. In this paper, probabilistic seismic hazard analysis has been carried out to calculate peak ground acceleration values at different time periods for estimating seismic shaking conditions in the study area. Further, these values are used as one of the causative factors of landslides in the study area and it is observed that it refines the preparation of landslide susceptibility zonation map in seismically active areas like Garhwal Himalayas. Keywords Himalayas  Chamoli earthquake  Landslide N. Pareek (&) National Technical Research Organization, Government of India, New Delhi 110091, India e-mail: naveeneq@gmail.com M. L. Sharma Department of Earthquake Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee 247667, Uttarakhand, India e-mail: sharmamukat@gmail.com M. K. Arora Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee 247667, Uttarakhand, India e-mail: manoj.arora@gmail.com S. Pal School of Engineering, Gautam Budha University, Greater Noida 201308, Uttar Pradesh, India e-mail: sh6281pa@gmail.com 123 Nat Hazards (2013) 65:739–765 DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0390-3