Landslide Hazard Zonation along the MH SH-73 at Kelghar Ghat, Satara, Maharashtra

Abstract

Road transportation is the most common victim of landslide in the world. The present study investigates the landslide hazard zonation along the MH SH-73 at Kelghar ghat between Medha and Mahabaleshwar hill station of Maharashtra. Remote Sensing and GIS were used for the landslide hazard zonation of this section. The ghat section was buffered 100 m on both side to define the extent of study area based on the field investigation. The study incorporated predefined important landslide causative factors, viz. slope, rainfall, relief, lithology, soil depth, soil erosion, soil texture, land use / land cover, drainage distance, drainage density, lineament distance, lineament density, aspect, temperature, landslide inventory and in this approach fifteen thematic layers were prepared in GIS platform. The weight and score were assigned to each thematic layer based on heuristic approach on their relative importance in causing landslide. Multi-criteria model in ArcGIS 10.5 software were used for the mapping landslide hazard zones and it were classified into six zones: very high (1.3 %), high (1.7 %), moderate (3.4 %), low (7.6 %) very low (8.4 %) and no risk zone (77.7 %). The final result of this research can help for proper mitigation and adaptation measures for engineers, planners and administrators for this ghat section. Keywords: GIS, Landslide Hazard Zonation, Remote Sensing, Susceptibility, Sahyadri, Kelghar.