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Quantitative analysis of the effect of human migration on the landslides after the 2010 Haiti earthquake using Landsat imagery

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Abstract

The 2010 Haiti earthquake displaced millions of people and induced numerous landslides. Migrants triggered staggering deforestation since new settlers need wooden resources. This deforestation caused soil degradation, erosion, flooding, and landslides. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of human displacement on landslide distribution and its frequency changes by comparing land use and land cover (LULC) maps of pre- and post-earthquake landslide distributions in Port-au-Prince, Artibonite, and Grande Anse. To assess the impact of anthropogenic activities on landslides, we employed a maximum likelihood method to produce LULC maps from Landsat images from 2002 to 2015. Landslide inventory maps were created through visual detection from high resolution satellite imagery. LULC characteristics of new landslide areas were assessed to find land cover types experienced landslides and their distribution characteristics, along with the changes in human influx. The result shows that there was no obvious increase in the number of landslides in forested land after the earthquake while grassland and barren showed an increase in the number of landslides (22% in Port-au-Prince and 77.1% in Artibonite, respectively). Migrants had not explored the forest because there were not enough resources to access remote areas and cut down trees. Since the human migration are more likely to be occurred in grassland and barren, anthropogenic impacts were more evident.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Y.K., upon request.

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  1. Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Yurika Kato

  2. Department of Geosciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    Jejung Lee

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Yurika Kato and Jejung Lee conceived conception and design. Yurika Kato contributed to acquisition of data, and analysis and interpretation of data. Yurika Kato participated in drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content; and Jejung Lee gives final approval of the version to be submitted and any revised version.

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Kato, Y., Lee, J. Quantitative analysis of the effect of human migration on the landslides after the 2010 Haiti earthquake using Landsat imagery. Nat Hazards 111, 3031–3052 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-05166-x

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