The Rwenzori Mountains, a landslide-prone region?

Abstract

The Rwenzori Mountains, a landslide-prone region?Abstract With its exceptionally steep topography, wet climate, and active faulting, landslides can be expected to occur in the Rwenzori Mountains. Whether or not this region is prone to landsliding and more generally whether global landslide inventories and hazard assessments are accurate in data-poor regions such as the East African highlands are thus far unclear. In order to address these questions, a first landslide inventory based on archive information is built for the Rwenzori Mountains. In total, 48 landslide and flash flood events, or combinations of these, are found. They caused 56 fatalities and considerable damage to road infrastructure, buildings, and cropland, and rendered over 14,000 persons homeless. These numbers indicate that the Rwenzori Mountains are landslide-prone and that the impact of these events is significant. Although not based on field investigations but on archive data from media reports and laymen accounts, our approach provides a useful complement to global inventories overlooking this region and increases our understanding of the phenomenon in the Rwenzori Mountains. Considering the severe impacts of landslides, the population growth and related anthropogenic interventions, and the likelihood of more intense rainfall conditions, there is an urgent need to invest in research on disaster risk reduction strategies in this region and other similar highland areas of Africa.

La résilience face aux glissements de terrain en Afrique équatoriale : Aller au-delà de l'identification des problèmes

“…LS are generally of small to moderate scale (<1 ha) but they have a high frequency. The perception of local stakeholders about LS origin agrees with the literature (Claessens et al, 2007;Knapen et al, 2006;Che et al, 2011;Jacobs et al, 2015;Crozier, 1986): they are mainly controlled at the local scale by an interplay of slope gradient, lithologies and human interventions. In West Uganda and West Cameroon, the focus group workshops highlighted that stakeholders and the exposed population, have a high awareness of LS hazard and some understanding of the processes.…”

“…In the Rwenzori and the Limbe areas, seismic activity was also mentioned as a factor favouring the occurrence of LS swarms, especially during 'large magnitude' earthquakes, e.g. Mw 6.2 earthquake of 1994 in Kabarole district, Uganda (Jacobs et al, 2015). Earthquake-triggered LS was confirmed in several locations in the Rwenzori Mountains but remains a matter of debate in SW Cameroon where seismic activity is less (Ayonghe et al, 1999;Ayonghe et al, 2004).…”

“…The number of casualties was limited to a few tens of persons over the last decades in each study area (e.g. Che et al, 2011;Jacobs et al, 2015). In contrast to the areas were workshops were organised (NW & SW Cameroon, Mt Rwenzori), the Mt Elgon region suffered several hundreds of LS-induced fatalities in 2010 and 2012 (e.g.…”

“…A recent preliminary inventory of LS based on scientific reports and website search (Jacobs et al, 2015) identified 48 LS and flash flood events from the last 100 years, most occurring in the last 15 years. These caused 56 fatalities, considerable damage to road infrastructure, buildings and cropland, and rendered over 14,000 people homeless.…”

Early warnings of hazardous thunderstorms over Lake Victoria

“…12 (2017) 074012 (e.g. Jacobs et al (2016a), Jacobs et al (2016b)) resulting in hybrid forecast products. Enhanced predictive skill may also be achieved by accounting for large-scale teleconnections and their influence on inter-annual circulation variability in East Africa (e.g.…”