Human activities, including extensive land use practices such as deforestation and intensive cultivation, may severely affect the landscape, and have caused important changes to the extent of natural forests in the last century. Such changes had a strong influence on the frequency of occurrence of natural hazards, including landslides. Being one of the most significant factors conditioning slope movements, any variation in the land cover pattern may determine changes in the landslide distribution. The study area is the Rivo Basin, located in Molise (Southern Apennines of Italy), a region severely affected by landslides. We prepared multi-temporal land cover and landslide inventory maps, aimed at developing different susceptibility maps to evaluate the effect of land cover changes in the predisposition to landslides. Based on the observed land cover trends, we simulated future scenarios of land cover, in the attempt to assess potential future changes in the landslide distribution and susceptibility in the study area. By investigating the relationship between the spatial pattern and distribution of past change, and location factors (as elevation, slope, distance to settlements), we were able to calibrate a land cover change model to simulate the future scenarios. The obtained results give important information regarding both past trends of human impact on landslide occurrence, and expected future directions. These data could be useful to provide insights toward a better land management for the study site, as well as for similar landslide-prone environments in southern Italy, contributing to establish good practices for the mitigation of the landslide risk in the future.
Multi-temporal landslide susceptibility maps and future scenarios for expected land cover changes (Southern Apennines, Italy)
PARISE, Mario
2017-01-01
Abstract
Human activities, including extensive land use practices such as deforestation and intensive cultivation, may severely affect the landscape, and have caused important changes to the extent of natural forests in the last century. Such changes had a strong influence on the frequency of occurrence of natural hazards, including landslides. Being one of the most significant factors conditioning slope movements, any variation in the land cover pattern may determine changes in the landslide distribution. The study area is the Rivo Basin, located in Molise (Southern Apennines of Italy), a region severely affected by landslides. We prepared multi-temporal land cover and landslide inventory maps, aimed at developing different susceptibility maps to evaluate the effect of land cover changes in the predisposition to landslides. Based on the observed land cover trends, we simulated future scenarios of land cover, in the attempt to assess potential future changes in the landslide distribution and susceptibility in the study area. By investigating the relationship between the spatial pattern and distribution of past change, and location factors (as elevation, slope, distance to settlements), we were able to calibrate a land cover change model to simulate the future scenarios. The obtained results give important information regarding both past trends of human impact on landslide occurrence, and expected future directions. These data could be useful to provide insights toward a better land management for the study site, as well as for similar landslide-prone environments in southern Italy, contributing to establish good practices for the mitigation of the landslide risk in the future.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
