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Spatio-temporal landslide inventory and susceptibility assessment using Sentinel-2 in the Himalayan mountainous region of Pakistan

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Abstract

The 2005 Kashmir earthquake has triggered widespread landslides in the Himalayan mountains in northern Pakistan and surrounding areas, some of which are active and are still posing a significant risk. Landslides triggered by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake are extensively studied; nevertheless, spatio-temporal landslide susceptibility assessment is lacking. This can be partially attributed to the limited availability of high temporal resolution remote sensing data. We present a semi-automated technique to use the Sentinel-2 MSI data for co-seismic landslide detection, landslide activities monitoring, spatio-temporal change detection, and spatio-temporal susceptibility mapping. Time series Sentinel-2 MSI images for the period of 2016–2021 and ALOS PALSAR DEM are used for semi-automated landslide inventory map development and temporal change analysis. Spectral information combined with topographical, contextual, textural, and morphological characteristics of the landslide in Sentinel-2 images is applied for landslide detection. Subsequently, spatio-temporal landslide susceptibility maps are developed utilizing the weight of evidence statistical modeling with seven causative factors, i.e., elevation, slope, geology, aspect, distance to fault, distance to roads, and distance to streams. The results reveal that landslide occurrence increased from 2016 to 2021 and that the coverage of areas of relatively high susceptibility has increased in the study area.

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Data availability

In this study, the generated and analyzed data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan project number 7445/KPK/NRPU/R&D/HEC/2017 for supporting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Centre of Excellence in Geology, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan

    Alam Sher Bacha, Muhammad Shafique, Mian Luqman Hussain & Sohail Wahid

  2. Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Harald van der Werff & Mark van der Meijde

  3. GIS and Space Applications in Geosciences (GSAG) Laboratory, National Centre of GIS and Space Applications in Geosciences, Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Shafique & Sohail Wahid

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  1. Alam Sher Bacha
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  2. Muhammad Shafique
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Bacha, A.S., Shafique, M., van der Werff, H. et al. Spatio-temporal landslide inventory and susceptibility assessment using Sentinel-2 in the Himalayan mountainous region of Pakistan. Environ Monit Assess 194, 845 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10514-w

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