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Co-seismic landslide inventory and susceptibility mapping in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake disaster area, China

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Abstract

The Ms 8.0 May 12, 2008 Wenchuan earthquake triggered tens of thousands of landslides. The widespread landslides have caused serious casualties and property losses, and posed a great threat to post-earthquake reconstruction. A spatial database, inventoried 43,842 landslides with a total area of 632 km2, was developed by interpretation of multi-resolution remote sensing images. The landslides can be classified into three categories: swallow, disrupted slides and falls; deep-seated slides and falls, and rock avalanches. The correlation between landslides distribution and the influencing parameters including distance from co-seismic fault, lithology, slope gradient, elevation, peak ground acceleration (PGA) and distance from drainage were analyzed. The distance from co-seismic fault was the most significant parameter followed by slope gradient and PGA was the least significant one. A logistic regression model combined with bivariate statistical analysis (BSA) was adopted for landslide susceptibility mapping. The study area was classified into five categories of landslide susceptibility: very low, low, medium, high and very high. 92.0% of the study area belongs to low and very low categories with corresponding 9.0% of the total inventoried landslides. Medium susceptible zones make up 4.2% of the area with 17.7% of the total landslides. The rest of the area was classified into high and very high categories, which makes up 3.9% of the area with corresponding 73.3% of the total landslides. Although the susceptibility map can reveal the likelihood of future landslides and debris flows, and it is helpful for the rebuilding process and future zoning issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, China

    Wei-le Li, Run-qiu Huang, Chuan Tang & Qiang Xu

  2. Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, 7500AA, The Netherlands

    Wei-le Li & Cees van Westen

Authors
  1. Wei-le Li
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  2. Run-qiu Huang
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  3. Chuan Tang
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  4. Qiang Xu
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  5. Cees van Westen
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Correspondence to Wei-le Li.

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Li, Wl., Huang, Rq., Tang, C. et al. Co-seismic landslide inventory and susceptibility mapping in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake disaster area, China. J. Mt. Sci. 10, 339–354 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-013-2471-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-013-2471-5

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