Changing rainfall and its impact on landslides in Sri Lanka

During the recent past the rainfall pattern in Sri Lanka has shown a noticeable change. This paper describes the effect of this change on the occurrence of landslides and their impacts to eco systems. This study shows that most of the landslides occurring in Sri Lanka during northeast monsoons, southwest monsoons and second inter-monsoon were located in three distinctively separated areas. Analysis of rainfall time series shows a trend of increased lengths of dry periods along with an increasing trend of rainfall intensity, especially after the late seventies. A strong relation is obtained between the location of landslides and the spatial distribution of areas where rainfall intensity is increased.