Regional-scale landslide activity and landslide susceptibility zonation in the Nepal Himalaya

Abstract

Landslide susceptibility zonation mapping is a fundamental procedure for geo-disaster management in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Recently, various landslide susceptibility zonation models have been introduced in Nepal with diverse approaches of assessment. However, validation is still a problem. Additionally, the role of various predisposing causative parameters for landslide activity is still not well understood in the Nepal Himalaya. To address these issues of susceptibility zonation and landslide activity, about 4,000 km2 area of central Nepal was selected for regional-scale assessment of landslide activity and susceptibility zonation mapping. In total, 655 new landslides and 9,229 old landslides were identified with the study area with the help of satellite images, aerial photographs, field data and available reports. The old landslide inventory was “blind landslide database” and could not explain the particular rainfall event responsible for the particular landslide. But considering size of the landslide, blind landslide inventory was reclassified into two databases: short-duration high-intensity rainfall-induced landslide inventory and long-duration low-intensity rainfall-induced landslide inventory. These landslide inventory maps were considered as proxy maps of multiple rainfall event-based landslide inventories. Similarly, all 9,884 landslides were considered for the activity assessment of predisposing causative parameters. For the Nepal Himalaya, slope, slope aspect, geology and road construction activity (anthropogenic cause) were identified as most affective predisposing causative parameters for landslide activity. For susceptibility zonation, multivariate approach was considered and two proxy rainfall event-based landslide databases were used for the logistic regression modelling, while a relatively recent landslide database was used in validation. Two event-based susceptibility zonation maps were merged and rectified to prepare the final susceptibility zonation map and its prediction rate was found to be more than 82 %. From this work, it is concluded that rectification of susceptibility zonation map is very appropriate and reliable. The results of this research contribute to a significant improvement in landslide inventory preparation procedure, susceptibility zonation mapping approaches as well as role of various predisposing causative parameters for the landslide activity.