Susceptibility assessments of shallow earthflows triggered by heavy rainfall at three catchments by logistic regression analyses

Abstract

Sometimes regional meteorological anomalies trigger different types of mass movements. In May 1998, the western Black Sea region of Turkey experienced such a meteorological anomaly. Numerous residential and agricultural areas and engineering lifelines were buried under the flood waters. Besides the reactivation of many previously delineated landslides, thousands of small-scale landslides (mostly the earthflow type) occurred all over the region. The earthflows were mainly developed in flysch-type units, which have already presented high landslide concentrations. In this study, three different catchments — namely Agustu, Egerci, and Kelemen — were selected because they have the most landslide-prone geological units of the region. The purposes of the present study are to put forward the spatial distributions of the shallow earthflows triggered, to describe the possible factors conditioning the earthflows, and to produce the shallow earthflow susceptibility maps of the three catchments. The unique condition units (UCU) were employed during the production of susceptibility maps and during statistical analyses. The unique condition units numbered 4052 for the Agustu catchment, 13,241 for the Egerci catchment and 12,314 for the Kelemen catchment. The earthflow intensity is the highest in the Agustu catchment (0.038 flow/UCU) and lowest in the Egerci catchment (0.0035 flow/UCU). Logistic regression analyses were also employed. However, during the analyses, some difficulties were encountered. To overcome the difficulties, a series of sensitivity analyses were performed based on some decision rules introduced in the present study. Considering the decision rules, the proper ratios of UCU free from earthflow (0) / UCU including the earthflow (1) for the Agustu, Egerci and Kelemen catchments were obtained as 3, 6, and 5, respectively. Also, a chart for the proper ratio selection was developed. The regression equations from the selected ratios were then applied to the entire catchment and the earthflow susceptibility maps were produced. The landslide susceptibility maps revealed that 15% of the Agustu catchment, 8% of the Egerci catchment, and 7% of the Kelemen catchment have very high earthflow susceptibility; and most of the earthflows triggered by the May 1998 meteorological event were found in the very high susceptibility zones.