Seismically reactivated Hattian slide in Kashmir, Northern Pakistan

The Pakistan 2005 earthquake, of magnitude 7.6, caused severe damage on landscape and infrastructure, in addition to numerous casualties. The event reactivated Hattian Slide, creating a rock avalanche in a location where earlier mass movements had happened already, as indicated by satellite imagery and ground investigation. The slide originated on Dana Hill, in the upper catchment area of Hattian on Karli Stream, a tributary of Jhelum River, Pakistan, and buried the hamlet Dandbeh and several farms nearby. A natural dam accumulated, impounding two lakes, the larger one threatening parts of downstream Hattian Village with flooding. An access road and artificial spillways needed to be constructed in very short time to minimize the flooding risk. As shown by this example, when pointing out the risk of large-scale damage to population and infrastructure by way of hazard indication maps of seismically active regions, and preparing for alleviation of that risk, it is advisable to consider the complete Holocene history of the slopes involved.     

Sedimentary impacts from landslides in the Tachia River Basin, Taiwan

A case study of coseismic landslides and post-seismic sedimentary impacts of landslides due to rainfall events was conducted in the Tachia River basin, Taichung County, central Taiwan. About 3000 coseismic landslides occurred in the basin during the M_L 7.3 Chi-Chi earthquake in 1999. The deposits from these landslides provided material for numerous debris flows induced by subsequent rainfall events. The estimated 4.1 × 10⁷ m³ of landslide debris produced in the upland area caused sediment deposition in riverbeds, and flash floods inundated downstream areas with sediment during torrential rains. The landslide frequency-size distributions for the coseismic landslides and the subsequent rainfall-induced landslides were analyzed to determine the sediment budgets of the post-seismic geomorphic response in the landslide-dominated basin. Both the coseismic and the rainfall-induced landslides show a power–law frequency-size distribution with a rollover. It was found that the rainfall-induced landslide magnitude was smaller than the coseismic one, and that both have comparable negative scaling exponents in cumulative form, of about − 2.0 for larger landslides (> 10^− 2 km²). This may be attributed to ongoing movement or reactivation of old landslides, and a natural stabilisation of small landslides between 10^− 4 and 10^− 2 km². It is proposed that the characteristics of geological formations and rainfall as well as changes in landslide area are reflected in the power–law distribution.     

降水与滑坡稳定性临界值试验研究

针对暴雨型滑坡灾害预报预警服务的需要,以江西为研究区域,建立了8个滑坡灾害监测点.通过监测试验,较系统地研究了大气降水对地下水位、孔隙水压力、滑坡土体应力及滑坡稳定性的影响;进行了大气降水、地下水位和滑坡稳定性的模拟,初步确定了江西省8个代表点促使滑坡复活的临界降水量指标,初步划分出江西省滑坡灾害预警降水量临界值.     

Modeling the potential distribution of shallow-seated landslides using the weights of evidence method and a logistic regression model： a case study of the Sabae Area, Japan

A number of statistical methods are typically used to effectively predict potential landslide distributions. In this study two multivariate statistical analysis methods were used （weights of evidence and logistic regression） to predict the potential distribution of shallow-seated landslides in the Kamikawachi area of Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture, Japan. First, the dependent variable （shallow-seated landslides） was divided into presence and absence, and the independent variables （environmental factors such as slope and altitude） were categorized according to their characteristics. Then, using the weights of evidence （WE） method, the weights of pairs comprising presence （w^＋（i）） or absence （w^-（i））, and the contrast values for each category of independent variable （evidence）, were calculated, Using the method that integrated the weights of evidence method and a logistic regression model, score values were calculated for each category of independent variable. Based on these contrast values, three models were selected to sum the score values of every gird in the study area. According to a receiver operating characteristic curve analysis （ROC）, model 2 yielded the best fit for predicting the potential distribution of shallow-seated landslide hazards, with 89% correctness and a 54.5% hit ratio when the occurrence probability （OP） of landslides was 70%. The model was tested using data from an area close to the study region, and showed 94% correctness and a hit ratio of 45.7% when the OP of landslides was 70%. Finally, the potential distribution of shallow-seated landslides, based on the OP, was mapped using a geographical information system.     

Typical source areas of May 1998 flow-like mass movements in the Campania region, Southern Italy

Flow-like mass movements in granular materials are among the most serious natural hazards, systematically producing huge amounts of damage and numerous victims, especially when involving volcanic soils. This is the case of the events in Southern Italy in May 1998, when rainfall triggered many destructive landslides along the slopes of a carbonate massif mantled by pyroclastic soils. Due to the complexity of the occurred phenomena, a shared interpretation of their triggering stage is still not available.

As a contribution to the topic, the paper initially discusses the geological and geomorphological features of the massif combining them in three hillslopes models. The models are then associated to the hydrogeological features and anthropogenic factors in order to define six typical landslides source areas that are not casually distributed on the massif. The study subsequently focuses on the most frequent type of source areas, associated to the largest unstable soil volumes and longest run-out distances. For these source areas, the triggering mechanism is discussed, with an example of geotechnical validation being proposed for a well monitored mountain basin. The geotechnical modelling at site scale confirms the geological analyses at massif scale and provides further insights into the events, thus highlighting the potential of a multidisciplinary approach for the interpretation of very complex slope instability phenomena.     

云南元阳县城滑坡防治管理

本文以云南元阳县城滑坡为切入点，探讨了该滑坡的形成环境及危害，环境地质评价，最后简述了主要的治理措施，防治效益及防治经验，对其它类型的滑坡勘探、评价GN治理有借鉴作用。     

Numerical modelling of seismic slope failure using MPM

The Finite Element Method (FEM) is widely used in the simulation of geotechnical applications. Owing to the limitations of FEM to model problems involving large deformations, many efforts have been made to develop methods free of mesh entanglement. One of these methods is the Material Point Method (MPM) which models the material as Lagrangian particles capable of moving through a background computational mesh in Eulerian manner. Although MPM represents the continuum by material points, solution is performed on the computational mesh. Thus, imposing boundary conditions is not aligned with the material representation. In this paper, a non-zero kinematic condition is introduced where an additional set of particles is incorporated to track the moving boundary. This approach is then applied to simulate the seismic motion resulting in failure of slopes. To validate this simulation procedure, two geotechnical applications are modelled using MPM. The first is to reproduce a shaking table experiment where the results of another numerical method are available. After validating the present numerical scheme for relatively large deformation problem, it is applied to simulate progression of a large-scale landslide during the Chi-Chi earthquake of Taiwan in which excessive material deformation and transportation is taking place.     

Validation of landslide hazard models using a semantic engine on online news

The objective of this work is twofold: (i) automatically setting up a landslide inventory using a state-of-the art semantic engine based on data mining on online news and (ii) evaluating if the automatically generated inventory can be used to validate a regional scale landslide warning system based on rainfall-thresholds.The semantic engine scanned internet news in real time in a 50 months test period. At the end of the process, an inventory of approximately 900 landslides was automatically set up for the Tuscany region (23,000 km², Italy). Using a completely automated procedure, the inventory was compared with the outputs of the regional landslide early warning system and a good correspondence was found, e.g. 84% of the events reported in the news is correctly identified by the warning system.On the basis of the obtained results, we conclude that automatic validation of landslide models using geolocalized landslide events feedback is possible. The source of data for validation can be obtained directly from the Internet channel using an appropriate semantic engine dedicated to perform a monitoring of the Google News aggregator.Moreover, validation statistics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the predictive model and, if deemed necessary, an update of the rainfall thresholds could be performed to obtain an improvement of the forecasting effectiveness of the warning system.In the near future, the proposed procedure could operate in continuous time and could allow for a periodic update of landslide hazard models and landslide early warning systems with minimum or none human intervention.     

Tectonic causes of landslides

The relationship between mass movements and tectonic lineaments is investigated in the Pliocene sand and clay terrains of Montepulciano (central Italy). Satellite images and aerial photographs show six families of lineament in southern Tuscany, all of which are present in the Montepulciano area. The orientation, location and density of these are related to corresponding attributes of morphological phenomena such as retrogressive slumps, drainage density and slope angle. Rose diagrams, stereographic plots and statistical analysis all reveal a close correspondence between slumping mass movements and the directions and spatial concentrations of fracture traces. Although slopes and valley trends respond more closely to Apennine (NW-trending) and anti-Apennine (NE-trending) lineaments, the longitudinal axes of landslides are strongly orientated NNW to N, the direction of one of the most significant lineament groups in western central Italy and the local study area.