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Identification of landslide-prone slopes at Paglajhora area, Darjeeling Himalaya, India

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Abstract

Paglajhora area, located in the southeastern part of the Kurseong town in the Darjeeling Himalaya region, India, experiences frequent slope failure especially in monsoon season. Due to the intricate disposition of major thrust zones (MCT, MBT, etc.), heavy rainfall, neotectonic and anthropogenic activities, etc., the cause of slope failure is not similar all over the area, which makes difficult to categorize the landslides based on their mode of failure. The present work is aimed to demarcate the landslide-prone areas from the surface displacement (horizontal) map derived by optical image correlation (OIC) technique applying normalized cross-correlation (NCC) algorithm of two temporal Landsat 8 OLI (level 1TP) images, supported by the ground field survey. Results indicate that the overall range of surface displacement (horizontal) rate in the study area varies from 0.4 to 8 m/year out of which the range 0.5–1.5 m/year being dominant classifying the slide type as slow-to-very slow earth flow with a velocity class varying from 3 to 2. Places showing relatively higher displacement values (3 to 8 m/year) match accurately with the already reported slide zones and the large exposed scarp surfaces noticed during the field surveys or distinguished from the satellite imagery. Areas with lower displacement rates (< 1.5 m/year) experience very slow earth flow, which are confirmed by the presence of cracks and steps on the major roads. Depths of shallow subsurface slip planes are established from dipole-dipole geo-electric surveys in few locations showing moderate surface velocity.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Prof. Andreas Kääb for his suggestion in choosing parameters while running the CIAS software. We also sincerely thank four anonymous reviewers for their in-depth reviews and constructive suggestions which have significantly improved the manuscript. Prof. Gianvito Scaringi is gratefully acknowledged for his editorial suggestions. Infrastructural facilities were provided by the CAS, Phase-V Department of Geological Sciences, Jadavpur University. We thank S. Kar, V. C. Kharkongor, A. Das, A. Chakraborty, S. Pal, G. Sarkar, D. Basu Majumdar and D. Das Majumdar for their help in different stages of geo-electric surveys and preparing few figures.

Funding

The present work is funded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India, through the research project (EMR-II/335/2015).

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700032, India

    Susanta Kumar Samanta & Ranjit Kumar Majumdar

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  1. Susanta Kumar Samanta
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Correspondence to Susanta Kumar Samanta.

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Samanta, S.K., Majumdar, R.K. Identification of landslide-prone slopes at Paglajhora area, Darjeeling Himalaya, India. Landslides 17, 2643–2657 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-020-01472-w

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