Landslide Hazard Zonation Along Milot-Kukës Motorway, Albania

Abstract

In this paper it is briefly described the landslide hazard zonation before and after the construction of the Milot-Kukës motorway, Albania. The studied area is a mountains zone with extremely complicated morphological and geological framework, characterized by steep slopes, intensively fractured and highly to completely weathered rocks. Due to intensive excavations done during its construction, many of the slopes are destabilized and nowadays, have become unstable. During and after the rainfalls, on both sides of the motorway, several landslides such as earth slide debris flow, rock falls and rocks slides have occurred and have increased the risk due to natural hazards. For this reason, the motorway’s area is analyzed in terms of landslide hazard zonation by using the high-resolution satellite imagery and factors data in a GIS environment. During 2015-2017, a 1:10000 scale engineering geological map is compiled and was used to identify the landslides location, lithological characteristic, slope features, geotechnical conditions and land use situations. As a result, the studied area was divided into five categories from very low to very high-risk zones. Moreover, based on the analysis results of the landslide hazard zonation before the motorway’s construction, it was concluded that the excavation works had a considerable influence in increase of hazard level, particularly on the instability of the slopes.