Abstract. The Serchio River Valley, in north-western Tuscany, is a well-known tourism area between the Apuan Alps and the Apennines. This area is frequently hit by heavy rainfall, which often triggers shallow landslides, debris flows and debris torrents, sometimes causing damage and death. The assessment of the rainfall thresholds for the initiation of shallow landslides is very important in order to improve forecasting and to arrange efficient alarm systems.With the aim of defining the critical rainfall thresholds for the Middle Serchio River Valley, a detailed analysis of the main rainstorm events was carried out. The hourly rainfall recorded by three rain gauges in the 1935-2010 interval was analysed and compared with the occurrence of shallow landslides. The rainfall thresholds were defined in terms of mean intensity I , rainfall duration D, and normalized using the mean annual precipitation. Some attempts were also carried out to analyze the role of rainfall prior to the damaging events. Finally, the rainfall threshold curves obtained for the study area were compared with the local, regional and global curves proposed by various authors. The results of this analysis suggest that in the study area landslide activity initiation requires a higher amount of rainfall and greater intensity than elsewhere.
The spatial distribution of shallow landslides is strongly influenced by different climatic conditions and environmental settings. This makes difficult the implementation of an exhaustive monitoring technique for\ud
correctly assessing the landslide susceptibility in different environmental contexts. In this work, a unique methodological strategy, based on the statistical implementation of the generalized additive model (GAM), was performed. This method was used to investigate the shallow landslide predisposition of four sites with different geological, geomorphological and land-use characteristics: the Rio Frate and the Versa catchments (Southern\ud
Lombardy) and the Vernazza and the Pogliaschina catchments (Eastern Liguria). A good predictive overall accuracy was evaluated computing by the area under the ROC curve (AUROC), with values ranging from 0.76 to 0.82 and estimating the mean accuracy of the model (0.70–0.75). The method showed a high flexibility, which led to a good identification of the most significant predisposing factors for shallow landslide occurrence\ud
in the different investigated areas. In particular, detailed susceptibility maps were obtained, allowing to identify the shallow landslide prone areas. This methodology combined with the use of the rainfall thresholds \ud
for triggering shallow landslides may provide an innovative tool useful for the improvement of spatial planning and early warning systems
Abstract. The Apuan Alps are characterized by frequent heavy rainfall. In several cases this triggered many shallow landslides (soil slips). With the aim of contributing to the landslide hazard evaluation of the southern Apuan Alps (upper Versilian area), a detailed analysis of the main pluviometric events was carried out. Data recorded at the main raingauge of the area from 1975 to 2002 were analysed and compared with the occurrence of soil slips, in order to examine the relationship between soil slip initiation and rainfall. Some thresholds for soil slip-debris flow activity in terms of mean intensity, duration and mean annual precipitation (MAP) were defined for the study area.
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