Topographic and morphological effects of global earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslides

Abstract

Landslides have different topographic and morphological characteristics due to their different triggering mechanisms. However, the differences in the characteristics of earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslides remain unclear. In this paper, we collect 12 cases of earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslides around the world and reveal the differences in characteristics of the two types of landslides. By examining the geometric characteristics and location distribution of the landslides, the results show that earthquake-induced landslides tend to have larger areas, perimeter, lengths, widths, area to perimeter ratios (area/perimeter), major axis (S M), and minor axis (s m) than rainstorm-induced landslides. In addition, earthquake-induced landslides have more complex, rounded, and compact shapes than rainstorm-induced landslides. Earthquake-induced landslides are predominantly clustered near ridges, whereas rainstorm-induced landslides are predominantly clustered near valleys. The results also indicate that earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslides mostly occur on 30 ° -50 ° and 10 ° -30 ° slopes, respectively, and both types are more likely to occur on sunny slopes. Moreover, the compactness and major axis are negatively logarithmically correlated for earthquake-induced landslides, while they are negatively exponentially correlated for rainstorm-induced landslides. Additional earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslide events have verified the reliability and extensibility of the research conclusions. This work is beneficial for the management of landslide hazards and the effective implementation of landslide prediction and risk assessment.

Keywords

Landslides / Geometric characteristics / Location distribution / Triggering mechanisms

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wenchao Huangfu: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Software, Methodology, Data curation. Haijun Qiu: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Jiading Wang: Validation. Ninglian Wang: Validation. Yang Zhang: Software. Ya Liu: Data curation. Ali Darvishi Boloorani: Validation. Mohib Ullah: Data curation.

Availability of data and materials

The earthquake- and rainstorm-induced landslide samples that support the findings of this study are openly available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27918024.v1.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42271078, 42471083), and Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province (2024SF-YBXM-669).

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