Preliminary Forecasting of Rainfall-Induced Shallow Landslides in the Wildfire Burned Areas of Western Greece

Spyridon Lainas, Nikolaos Depountis and Nikolaos Sabatakakis
Additional contact information
Spyridon Lainas: Department of Geology, Laboratory of Engineering Geology, University of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece
Nikolaos Depountis: Department of Geology, Laboratory of Engineering Geology, University of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece
Nikolaos Sabatakakis: Department of Geology, Laboratory of Engineering Geology, University of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-20

Abstract: A new methodology for shallow landslide forecasting in wildfire burned areas is proposed by estimating the annual probability of rainfall threshold exceedance. For this purpose, extensive geological fieldwork was carried out in 122 landslides, which have been periodically activated in Western Greece, after the devastating wildfires that occurred in August 2007 and burned large areas in several parts of Western Greece. In addition, daily rainfall data covering more than 40 years has been collected and statistically processed to estimate the exceedance probability of the rainfall threshold above which these landslides are activated. The objectives of this study are to quantify the magnitude and duration of rainfall above which landslides in burned areas are activated, as well as to introduce a novel methodology on rainfall-induced landslide forecasting. It has been concluded that rainfall-induced landslide annual exceedance probability in the burned areas is higher when cumulative rainfall duration ranges from 6 to 9 days with local differences due to the prevailing geological conditions and landscape characteristics. The proposed methodology can be used as a basis for landslide forecasting in wildfire-affected areas, especially when triggered by rainfall, and can be further developed as a tool for preliminary landslide hazard assessment.

Keywords: rainfall threshold; shallow landslides; wildfires; landslide forecasting; landslide hazard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/8/877/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/8/877/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:8:p:877-:d:618710

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().