Cliffs line many erosional coastlines. Localized failures can cause land loss and hazard, and impact ecosystems and sediment routing. Links between cliff erosion and forcing mechanisms are poorly constrained, due to limitations of classic approaches. Combining multi-seasonal seismic and drone surveys, wave, precipitation and groundwater data we study drivers and triggers of seismically detected failures along the chalk cliffs on Germany's largest island, Rügen. The network consists of four (later five) seismic stations along the 8.6 km long chalk cliff coast. Waveform data are available from the GEOFON data centre, under network code 4K, and are embargoed until Jan 2021.