Instability Index Derived from a Landslide Inventory for Watershed Stability Assessment and Mapping
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Case Studies
Instability Index Derived from a Landslide Inventory for Watershed Stability Assessment and Mapping
Cheng-Chien Liu, Ming-Hsun Ko, Huei-Lin Wen, Kuei-Lin Fu, Shu-Ting Chang
Abstract :
Watersheds represent natural units of social–ecological systems and affect crop productivity. Extreme weather events accelerate the natural erosion process by triggering more landslides in watersheds. To achieve the land degradation neutrality set up by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, it is necessary to assess and map spatiotemporal landslides in watersheds. This paper proposes an innovative approach to calculating the instability index by preparing an annual landslide inventory, determining the optimum sub-watershed, compensating for shadow effects on the time series of the landslide area ratio, and classifying the standard deviations to different levels of instability.
Taking the Qingquan watershed as an example, the instability index calculated for 22 sub-watersheds makes it possible to identify hot spots that are prone to collapse. This new index can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of watershed management before and after completion of a specific engineering project, as well as to update the latest upriver situation to evaluate current management practices and develop strategies for future planning. Based on this new approach, the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau of Taiwan assesses the stability of 28 watersheds, and the results are made available on the Big Geospatial Information System.
Keywords : forest watershed; optimum sub-watershed; landslide susceptibility; landslide inventory; watershed management and flood mitigation; instability index
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8(3), 145; DOI: 10.3390/ijgi8030145
Taxonomy
- Watershed Management
- Risk Mitigation Strategy
- Watershed
- Mitigation
- Integrated Watershed Management
- Forestry
- Forest Ecosystems
- Forest Conservation
- Forest Restoration
- Forest Inventory Managment
- Watershed Management
- Mitigation