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Abstract
Climate impact on landslide occurrence and spatial patterns were analyzed within the larch-dominant communities associated with continuous permafrost areas of central Siberia. We used high resolution satellite imagery (i.e. QuickBird, WorldView) to identify landslide scars over an area of 62 000 km2. Landslide occurrence was analyzed with respect to climate variables (air temperature, precipitation, drought index SPEI), and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite derived equivalent of water thickness anomalies (EWTA). Landslides were found only on southward facing slopes, and the occurrence of landslides increased exponentially with increasing slope steepness. Lengths of landslides correlated positively with slope steepness. The observed upper elevation limit of landslides tended to coincide with the tree line. Observations revealed landslides occurrence was also found to be strongly correlated with August precipitation (r = 0.81) and drought index (r = 0.7), with June–July–August soil water anomalies (i.e., EWTA, r = 0.68–0.7), and number of thawing days (i.e., a number of days with tmax > 0 °C; r = 0.67). A significant increase in the variance of soil water anomalies was observed, indicating that occurrence of landslides may increase even with a stable mean precipitation level. The key-findings of this study are (1) landslides occurrence increased within the permafrost zone of central Siberia in the beginning of the 21st century; (2) the main cause of increased landslides occurrence are extremes in precipitation and soil water anomalies; and (3) landslides occurrence are strongly dependent on relief features such as southward facing steep slopes.
Highlights
Landslides are a widespread phenomenon within Eurasian and North American permafrost areas (Gorshkov et al 2003, Wieczorek et al 2007, Wang et al 2009, Jones et al 2010)
31 landslides were excluded from the temporal analysis because they could not be dated with one-year precision
The landslide statistics including slope azimuth and slope steepness are presented in table 2
Summary
Landslides are a widespread phenomenon within Eurasian and North American permafrost areas (Gorshkov et al 2003, Wieczorek et al 2007, Wang et al 2009, Jones et al 2010). Studies have shown that in recent years warming in permafrost areas has resulted in an increase of landslide incidents, with landslides expected to be more frequent with continued warming temperature and an increase in precipitation (Montrasio and Valentino 2008, Blunden and Arndt 2011, Shan et al 2015). Substantial reduction in the range of the geographical limits of permafrost has been observed since 1975 in Russia (IPCC 2013). During the last four decades, an increase of permafrost temperatures of 0.3–2.0°C has been observed in Siberia (Romanovsky et al 2010). Temperature increases of 2°C or greater may impact local industrial infrastructure, including the gas and oil industries (Anisimov and Reneva 2011)
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