Landslide disaster in the loess area of China

China is the country with most widely distributed loess area in the world, and its loess area accounts of 6.63% of total nation land area. The landslide disaster occurs frequently for complex natural condition and becomes major factors hindering the social and economic development of loess regions. Through different indexes, the authors divided the landslides into 9 principal types and analyzed the distribution characteristics of loess landslide in time and space, the affecting factors and mechanism of landslides. It is pointed out that time and spatial distributions of landslides are closely correlative to topographic and geomorphic conditions, earthquake and rainfall, and the key influencing factors include topography, geomorphology, new tectonic movements, earthquake activity, surface water, ground water and human activities. The authors emphasized that the loess landslide was an urgent task for sustainable development in the loess zone.