The influence of land use and land cover change on landslide susceptibility: a case study in Zhushan Town, Xuan'en County (Hubei, China)

Abstract

Abstract. Land use and land cover change can increase or decrease landslide susceptibility (LS) in the mountainous areas. In the hilly and mountainous part of southwestern China, land use and land cover change (LUCC) has taken place in the last decades due to infrastructure development and rapid economic activities. This development and activities can worsen the slope susceptible to sliding due to mostly the cutting of slopes. This study, taking Zhushan Town, Xuan'en County, as the study area, aims to evaluate the influence of land use and land cover change on landslide susceptibility at a regional scale. Spatial distribution of landslides was determined in terms of visual interpretation of aerial photographs and remote sensing images, supported by field surveys. Two types of land use and land cover (LUC) maps, with a time interval covering 21 years (1992–2013), were prepared: the first was obtained by the neural net classification of images acquired in 1992 and the second by the object-oriented classification of images in 2002 and 2013. Landslide-susceptible areas were analyzed using the logistic regression model (LRM) in which six influencing factors were chosen as the landslide susceptibility indices. In addition, the hydrologic analysis method was applied to optimize the partitioning of the terrain. The results indicated that the LUCC in the region was mainly the transformation from the grassland and arable land to the forest land, which is increased by 34.3 %. An increase of 1.9 % is shown in the area where human engineering activities concentrate. The comparison of landslide susceptibility maps among different periods revealed that human engineering activities were the most important factor in increasing LS in this region. Such results emphasize the requirement of a reasonable land use planning activity process.

Analysis of the spatial association of geographical detector-based landslides and environmental factors in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, China

“…(5) Land cover and VFC . Changes in land use and land cover can change landslide susceptibility in mountainous areas [ 65 ]. According to the VFC results, high VFC areas rather than low VFC areas are prone to landslides, except for flow-like landslides, and medium VFC areas are the areas most at risk.…”

Large-Scale Landslide Susceptibility Mapping Using an Integrated Machine Learning Model: A Case Study in the Lvliang Mountains of China

“…The other one is human engineering activities. The slope instability occurs when the slope angle is relatively large and the external disturbance also exists (Chen et al, 2019). In addition, landslides appear to have clustered in moderate elevations.…”

Preface: Natural hazard impacts on technological systems and infrastructures

“…Jeong et al (2019) study freezing precipitation and extreme ice loads that can lead to severe damage and the failure of buildings and infrastructure. Fluixá-Sanmartín et al (2019) assess the impacts of climate change on dam safety under hydrological scenarios. Chen et al (2019) evaluate the influence of land use and land cover change on landslide susceptibility.…”

“…The study areas vary from national and interregional scales in North America (Jeong et al, 2019), Brazil (Sayão et al, 2020), Chili, Japan (Williams et al, 2020), and the Russian Federation (Frolova et al, 2020;Petrova, 2020) to regional and local scales in Normandy, France (Braud et al, 2020), the province of Salamanca in Spain (Fluixá-Sanmartín et al, 2019), Bucharest in Romania (Toma-Danila et al, 2020), Hubei Province in China (Chen et al, 2019), and Ngazidja Island, NW of Madagascar (Mossoux et al, 2019).…”