Abstract
District Ghizer is a rugged mountainous territory which experiences several landslides each year. There are 16 major landslide areas and 53 villages that are at high risk to hazards. Keeping in view the severity of natural hazards, the present study was designed to generate landslide susceptibility map based on twelve causative factors viz., slope, aspect, elevation, drainage network, Stream Power Index (SPI), Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), lithological units, fault lines, rainfall, road network, land cover and soil texture. Soil texture was determined by particle size analysis and data for other factors were acquired from freely available sources. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed to identify major landslide causative factors in the district Ghizer. Further, a temporal assessment from 1999 till 2015 was generated to assess the impact of land cover change on landslides. It indicated that the barren soil/ exposed rocks and glaciers have reduced while the vegetation and water classes have shown increment. The total area that lies in moderate to very high landslide susceptible zones was 74.38%, while slope is the main landslide causative factor in the district Ghizer. Validation of the susceptibility map showed 88.1% of the landslides in the study area had occurred in the moderate to very high susceptible zones.
Highlights
Most of the northern part of Pakistan is located in snow-covered mountains
Keeping in view the severity of natural hazards, the present study was designed to generate landslide susceptibility map based on twelve causative factors viz., slope, aspect, elevation, drainage network, Stream Power Index (SPI), Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), lithological units, fault lines, rainfall, road network, land cover and soil texture
The final landslide susceptibility map was generated using these weights in the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC)
Summary
The steep relief, snow, and glaciers, in the region, are exceptional but strong precipitation and a high seismicity contributes to the origin of widespread natural processes like debris flow, flash floods, earthquakes, rockfall or landslides [1]. In Karakoram Mountains eight various types of mass movements have been observed, rock falls, avalanche, rockslides, debris flow, flow slides, rotational slip, slumps and creep [2]. Among these debris flow and flow slides are the most prevailing and frequent type of the mass movement noted in the Karakoram. The HKKH Mountains are especially prone to hydrogeological disasters, such as flash floods, landslides, and Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs). Gilgit Baltistan (GB) is comprised of a rugged mountainous topography where mountains comprise 90% of the total area and susceptible to landslides, lakes formation and GLOFs [5]
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