Relationship between landslides and mountain development—Integrating geospatial statistics and a new long-term database

Abstract

Development in mountainous areas is inevitable in countries with high population densities, but the actual relationship between development and landslides remains uncertain. Clarifying the key current or historical factors resulting in landslides is crucial for hazard prevention and mitigation. This study focused on the Shihmen Reservoir catchment in Taiwan. Two combinations of explanatory variables in five different years (1946, 1971, 2001, 2004, and 2012) collected from a geodatabase and digital archives were used to conduct proximity and discrete logistic regression analyses. The results demonstrate that landslides increased dramatically from 1946 to 2012 in the catchment area. The proximity and overlapping of human development with landslides increased. However, the logistic regression results indicated that variation in susceptibility to landslides was due to natural causes, with the exception of historical deforestation and newly constructed road systems. Therefore, well-recovered historical woodland sites might currently be landslide-prone areas. We suggest that cumulative historical events should be considered as explanatory variables in future landslide prediction analysis.