Abstract
The July 2013 and 2017 extreme rainstorms in Loess Plateau China caused serious damage and tremendous shallow landslides. Few works addressed the characteristics of shallow landslides and their relationship with vegetation pattern. The extreme rainstorm in July 2013 provided a natural experiment to examine the relationship between shallow landslide and vegetation. Using high-resolution GeoEye-1 image on July 20, 2013, and terrain data, the shallow landslide distribution and their relationships with vegetation pattern are examined. The results show that the July 2013 rainstorm provides accumulative rainfall amount far more than historical records and the maximum daily rainfall amount each do not differentiate a lot with previous records. Shallow landslides are prone to occur in the transitional slope area and have gradient of 35–55°. Most landslides are located on sunny slope areas with sparse vegetation, regardless of slope aspect. Shallow landslides in the high-cover vegetation area are less in number, while have larger area and deeper depth than those in moderate- and low-cover vegetation area. Few landslides and small average erosion modulus in high-cover vegetation areas imply that vegetation acts a positive role on landslide mitigation. Analysis of the topographic initiation condition illustrates that landslides with high-cover vegetation require larger contribution area and steeper terrain gradients than those with medium- and low-cover vegetation. Interestingly, the average erosion modulus in the study area is approximately close to the modulus before vegetation implementation measures since 1960. The results of this work may provide a clue that the shallow landslides triggered by extreme rainstorms may serve as the main sediment resources in the rainstorm center.
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This study was supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (Grant No. 42130701) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42177309).
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Deng, J., Ma, C. & Zhang, Y. Shallow landslide characteristics and its response to vegetation by example of July 2013, extreme rainstorm, Central Loess Plateau, China. Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 100 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02606-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02606-1