Recent advancements of landslide hydrology

Abstract

Occurrence of rainfall‐induced landslides is increasing worldwide, owing to land use and climate changes. Although the connection between hydrology and rainfall‐induced landslides might seem obvious, hydrological processes have been only marginally considered in landslide research for decades. In 2016, an advanced review paper published in WIREs Water [Bogaard and Greco (2016), WIREs Water, 3(3), 439–459] pointed out several challenging issues for landslide hydrology research: considering large‐scale hydrological processes in the assessment of slope water balance; including antecedent hydrological information in landslide hazard assessment; understanding and quantifying the feedbacks between deformation and infiltration/drainage processes; overcoming the conceptual mismatch of soil mechanics models and hydrological models. While little progress has been made on the latter two issues, a variety of studies have been published, focusing on the role of hydrological processes in landslide initiation and prediction. The importance of the identification of the origin of water to understand the processes leading to landslide activation is largely acknowledged. Techniques and methodologies for the definition of landslide catchments and for the assessment of landslide water balance are progressing fast, often considering the hydraulic effect of vegetation. The use of hydrological information in landslide prediction models has also progressed enormously. Empirical predictive tools, to be implemented in early warning systems for shallow landslides, benefit from the inclusion of antecedent soil moisture, extracted from different sources depending on the scale of the prediction, leading to significant improvement of their predictive skill. However, this kind of information is generally still missing in operational LEWS.This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Hydrological Processes

Space-time data-driven modeling of precipitation-induced shallow landslides in South Tyrol, Italy

“…Also, we highlight that even though the developed approach accounts for the effects of medium-term preparatory precipitation before the slope failure, more thorough analysis of hydrological information should be incorporated. In the case of shallow landsliding, the antecedent soil moisture conditions control the rainwater being infiltrated in the soil and ultimately lead to a landslide occurrence (Bogaard and Greco, 2018;Greco et al, 2023). In our case, the preparatory precipitation may serve as a proxy for subsurface wetness before the triggering event; however, for regional scale assessments, other alternatives rely on the direct use of soil moisture estimates, the majority derived from satellite products (Thomas et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2021) and comparably fewer from in situ measurements (Wicki et al, 2020).…”

“…Conventionally, these methods focus only on the triggering precipitation information. However, there is a growing trend toward incorporating hydrological effects and medium-term antecedent precipitation conditions (Bogaard and Greco, 2018;Chleborad, 2003;Greco et al, 2023;Monsieurs et al, 2019;Nedumpallile Vasu et al, 2016). Another relevant issue lies in the prevalent adoption of a presence-only framework, which focuses exclusively on rainfall events leading to landslide occurrences while disregarding rainfall events that do not trigger landslides.…”

Comparing Different Coupling and Modeling Strategies in Hydromechanical Models for Slope Stability Assessment

“…It is well known that many landslides are triggered by rainfall [1][2][3][4][5]. When rainwater infiltrates the soil, it alters both the overall weight and pore pressure, subsequently impacting how stress is distributed within hillslopes.…”

Understanding hydrologic controls of sloping soil response to precipitation through machine learning analysis applied to synthetic data

“…While the importance of soil moisture conditions on slope runoff and drainage has been recognised long since (Ponce and Hawkins, 1996;Tromp-Van Meerveld and McDonnell, 2006a, b), the scientific community has only recently started providing new perspectives to better understand hydrologic conditions predisposing slopes to landslides (Bogaard and Greco, 2018;Greco et al, 2023) to explain why most of large rain events do not destabilise slopes and only some do (Bogaard and Greco, 2016), and physically based models capable of integrating hydrological knowledge for predicting landslide occurrence have been proposed (e.g. Bordoni et al, 2015;Greco et al, 2018;Marino et al, 2021).…”

“…The triggering of some rainfall-induced geohazards, such as shallow landslides and debris flows, is favoured by pore pressure increase, caused by rainwater infiltration and consequent soil moisture accumulation. The storage of rainwater within the soil requires drainage mechanisms that develop D. C. Roman Quintero et al: Understanding hydrologic controls of sloping soil response in the slopes in response to precipitation to be ineffective at draining much of the infiltrating water (Greco et al, 2021(Greco et al, , 2023. Consequently, especially for nowcasting and early warning purposes, the identification of hydrological variables suitable for identifying slope predisposing conditions is extremely useful.…”