Exploring extreme rainfall-triggered landslides using 3D unsaturated flow, antecedent moisture and spatially distributed soil depth

Abstract

The susceptibility to shallow landslides is affected by several factors. Rainfall intensity, soil thickness distribution, and antecedent moisture conditions are components that influence the spatio-temporal prediction of landslides at the watershed scale. Yet, the combined impact of these factors on the susceptibility to landslides has been overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to investigate landslides triggered by extreme precipitation in the Tijuca Massif, Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil. Our approach couples a 3D variably saturated flow solver with the infinite slope stability method to calculate the statistical distributions of the safety factor and the pore pressure at the soil–bedrock interface. Numerical simulations were performed for 6 scenarios considering 1-year spin-up time for soil moisture and different spatially distributed soil depths. The results show that during extreme precipitation events, soil depth and initial moisture conditions may not have much influence on the safety factor, as the intensity and duration of rainfall will be the triggering agents. Comparison of simulated unstable zones and field data from mapped landslide scars further supported this conclusion. We conclude that simple soil depth models are feasible options for regional studies of landslide susceptibility. Our findings are relevant to understanding shallow landslides induced by extreme rainfall in Rio de Janeiro and other regions with similar geological and climate settings.