Abstract
Landslides are natural disasters that have an impact in many areas around the world including the territory of the Republic of Macedonia. In this country, about 300 large landslides are registered, most of which cause serious damage to the infrastructure almost every year. In that sense, the mapping of sites that are susceptible to landslides is essential for the management of these areas. This is a crucial step to prevent landslides in places where this could be expected or to mini-mize its damages. Therefore, a heuristic approach of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with Geographic In-formation System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) is used in this work for the assessment of potential landslide areas in the Republic of Macedonia. In the procedure, 6 triggering factors indicating a strong influence on the landslide activity are selected, including lithology, slope angle, land cover, terrain curvature, distance from rivers and distance from roads. Through the procedure, expert-based weight of these factors is made. The LS model is produced with the summing up of the factor layers in the form of harmonized raster grids. Finally, the values of the grid model are classified according to the quantiles and natural breaks scheme. The produced maps show acceptable results confirmed by validation methods and ROC analysis, indicating that about 40% of the country area is under high and very high landslide susceptibility. This ap-proach can be further improved if combined with statistical methods in the form of a hybrid model.
Highlights
With large areas of erodible crystalline rocks, sandstones, lacustrine and fluvial deposits, steep slopes (39.5 % of the area above 15°), semi-arid climate and sparse vegetation, landslides are very common in North Macedonia
According to the prepared landslide inventory, own experience and relevant publications, most of the landslides in the Republic of Macedonia occur on moderate slopes (10–30°) and on terrain composed by clastic sediments (Neogene lacustrine deposits, colluvium sediments) and schists
Even with very limited landslide inventory, statistically, there is about 78% agreement (AUC value) between the maps and 270 landslide locations, which is an acceptable result taking into consideration the scale of analysis
Summary
With large areas of erodible crystalline rocks (gneiss, mica-schists, other schists), sandstones, lacustrine and fluvial deposits, steep slopes (39.5 % of the area above 15°), semi-arid climate and sparse vegetation, landslides are very common in North Macedonia. In addition to the natural factors, increased human impact (road-cuts and heavy constructions on steep terrain) significantly contribute to the activation of landslides resulting in economic damages and even casualties [1, 2]. To reduce the risk from the landslides, identification and mapping of the landslide-prone area is a very important task. This information is often described in the form of landslide susceptibility zonation (LSZ) [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. According to Brabb [10], landslide susceptibility (LS) is the likelihood of a landslide to occur in an area on the basis of local terrain conditions. According to van Westen et al [11], a landslide susceptibility analysis (LSA) involves essentially four main phases: (a) the production of a landslide inventory map, (b) the assessment of event – controlling factors that influence the landslide manifestation, (c) the appli-
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