The influence of climate change and canopy disturbances on landslide susceptibility in headwater catchments

Scheidl, Christian; Heiser, Micha; Kamper, Sebastian; Thaler, Thomas; Klebinder, Klaus; Nagl, Fabian; Lechner, Veronika; Markart, Gerhard; Rammer, Werner; Seidl, Rupert

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140588

Cited by 49 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 64 publications

(72 reference statements)

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“…The results of our study are not only relevant for our case study site, but can provide important information for other sites with similar forest and rockfall conditions. They further con rm that regular disturbances can promote regeneration, and therefore favor the transition of current species to more drought resistant ones, which may positively in uence the protective function of the forest in long-term (Scheidl et al 2020). Consequently, forest management may play a crucial role in accelerating the regeneration and immigration of drought adapted species and thus increase the resistance and resilience of the protection forest analyzed in this study under a changing climate (Brang 2001).…”

Section: Generalization Of the Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

Climate change impacts the protective effect of forests: A case study in Switzerland

Moos

Guisan

Randin

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In steep terrain, forests play an important role as natural means of protection against natural hazards, such as rockfall. Due to climate warming, significant changes in the protection service of these forests have to be expected in future. Shifts of current to more drought adapted species may result in temporary or even irreversible losses in the risk reduction provided by these forests. In this study, we assessed how the protective effect against rockfall of a protection forest in the western part of the Valais in the Swiss Alps may change in future, by combining dynamic forest modelling with a quantitative risk analysis. Current and future forest development was modelled with the spatially explicit forest model TreeMig for a moderate (RCP4.5) and an extreme (RCP8.5) climate change scenario. The simulated forest scenarios were compared to ground-truth data from the current forest complex. We quantified the protective effect of the different forest scenarios based on the reduction of rockfall risk for people and infrastructure at the bottom of the slope. Rockfall risk was calculated on the basis of three-dimensional rockfall simulations. The forest simulations predicted a clear decrease in basal area of most of the currently present species in future. The forest turned into a Q. pubescens dominated forest, for both climate scenarios, and mixed with P. sylvestris in RCP4.5. F. sylvatica completely disappeared in RCP8.5. With climate warming, a clear increase in risk is expected for both climate change scenarios. In the long-term (> 100 years), a stabilization of risk, or even a slight decline may be expected due to an increase in biomass of the trees. The results of this study further indicate that regular forest interventions may promote regeneration and thus accelerate the shift in species distribution. Future research should address the long-term effect of different forest management strategies on the protection service of forests under climate change.

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Section: Generalization Of the Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

Climate change impacts the protective effect of forests: A case study in Switzerland

Moos

Guisan

Randin

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…A number of studies have actually started looking in this direction, with interesting examples on soil moisture (Gorsevski et al, 2006), land use/land cover (Meusburger and Alewell, 2009;Reichenbach et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2019b;Shu et al, 2019), and climatic variables (Hua et al, 2020;Scheidl et al, 2020;Fan et al, 2021). Samia et al (2017) proposed that an appropriate susceptibility assessment for an area in Collazzone (Italy) may require the information of previous landslide occurrences as a predisposing factor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space-time landslide susceptibility modelling in Taiwan

Fang¹,

Wang²,

Westen³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Portraying spatiotemporal variations in landslide susceptibility patterns is crucial for landslide prevention and management. In this study, we implement a space-time modeling approach to predict the landslide susceptibility on a yearly basis across the main island of Taiwan, from 2004 to 2018. We use a Bayesian version of a binomial generalized additive model, which assumes that landslide occurrences follow a Bernoulli distribution. We generate 46,074 slope units to partition the island of Taiwan and divided the time domain into 14 annual units. The binary landslide label assigned to each slope unit and their temporal replicates come from an available landslide database, that contains an inventory for every year. We only consider new landslides or reactivations of previous mass movements in the yearly inventories. This information and its absence counterpart are regressed against a set of static and dynamic covariates. Our modeling strategy features an initial explanatory model to test the goodness-of-fit and interpret the effect of covariates. Then, five cross-validation (CV) schemes are tested to provide a full spectrum of the predictive capacity of our model. Specifically, we implement a fully randomized 10-fold CV, a spatially constrained CV, two temporal CV (a leave one year out and a sequential temporal aggregation), together with a spatio-temporal CV. We summarize the performance in each of these tests, through their pure numerical expression as well as their residual representation in space and time. Overall, our space-time model produces excellent and interpretable results. We consider this type of dynamic prediction the new direction to take to finally move away from the static view provided by traditional susceptibility models. And, we consider such analyses just a stepping stone for further improvements, the most natural of which would lead to statistical simulations for future scenarios.

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“…assessment, it provides a methodological framework that can be applied at other case study sites, where climate change has not yet been considered in the forest scenarios (Bigot et al, 2009;Moos et al, 2019a) or even be transferred to regional scale (Scheidl et al, 2020b). Our results also indicate that regular disturbances can promote regeneration, and therefore favor the transition of current species to more drought resistant ones, which may positively influence the protective function of the forest in longterm (Scheidl et al, 2020a). Consequently, forest management may play a crucial role in accelerating the regeneration and immigration of drought adapted species and thus increase the resistance and resilience of the protection forest analyzed in this study under a changing climate (Brang, 2001).…”

Section: Generalization Of the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Climate Change Impacts the Protective Effect of Forests: A Case Study in Switzerland

Moos

Guisan

Randin

et al. 2021

Front. For. Glob. Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In steep terrain, forests play an important role as natural means of protection against natural hazards, such as rockfall. Due to climate warming, significant changes in the protection service of these forests have to be expected in future. Shifts of current to more drought adapted species may result in temporary or even irreversible losses in the reduction of rockfall risk provided by these forests. In this study, we assessed how the protective capacity against rockfall of a protection forest in the western part of the Valais in the Swiss Alps may change in future, by combining dynamic forest modelling with a quantitative risk analysis. Current and future forest development was modelled with the spatially explicit forest model TreeMig under a moderate (RCP4.5) and an extreme (RCP8.5) climate change scenario. The simulated forest scenarios were compared to ground-truth data from the current forest complex. We quantified the protective effect of the different forest scenarios based on the reduction of rockfall risk for people and infrastructure at the bottom of the slope. Rockfall risk was calculated on the basis of three-dimensional rockfall simulations. The forest simulations predicted a clear decrease in basal area of most of the currently occuring species (Fagus sylvatica, Picea abies, Larix decidua, and Abies alba) in future. The forest turned into a Quercus pubescens dominated forest, for both climate scenarios, mixed with Pinus sylvestris under RCP4.5. With climate warming, a clear increase in risk is expected for both climate change scenarios. In the long-term (>100 years), a stabilization of risk, or even a slight decline may be expected due to an increase in biomass of the trees. The results of this study further indicate that regular forest interventions may promote regeneration and thus accelerate the shift in species distribution. Future research should explore into more details the long-term effect of different adaptive forest management strategies on the protection service of forests under climate change.

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The influence of climate change and canopy disturbances on landslide susceptibility in headwater catchments

Cited by 49 publications

References 64 publications

Climate change impacts the protective effect of forests: A case study in Switzerland

Climate change impacts the protective effect of forests: A case study in Switzerland

Space-time landslide susceptibility modelling in Taiwan

Climate Change Impacts the Protective Effect of Forests: A Case Study in Switzerland

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