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Landslide Susceptibility Assessment and Validation in the Framework of Municipal Planning in Portugal: The Case of Loures Municipality

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Abstract

The legislation that demands the evaluation of landslide susceptibility in Portugal at the municipal level is the National Ecological Reserve (NER). A methodology for the evaluation of landslide susceptibility to be used in municipal planning is applied in Loures Municipality (169.3 km²) located north of Lisbon (Portugal). A landslide inventory was made for the whole area interpreting orthophoto maps and aerial photographs and using standard geomorphologic techniques in field work. It consists of 686 polygons, each polygon representing a rotational, a deep translational or a shallow translational slide, and is integrated into a GIS database. Landslide susceptibility is evaluated using algorithms based on statistical/probabilistic analysis (Information Value Method) over unique-condition terrain units in a raster basis. Three susceptibility models are elaborated independently according to the type of slide (rotational, deep translational, shallow translational). The landslide susceptibility maps are prepared by sorting all pixels according to the pixel susceptibility value in descending order. The robustness and accuracy of the landslide susceptibility models are evaluated by prediction-rate curves, which are used for the quantitative interpretation of the landslide susceptibility maps. Unstable slopes that have to be included into the National Ecological Reserve are extracted from the three susceptibility maps following the general rules to draw the NER that state that the area to be included in the NER should guarantee the inclusion of at least 70 % of the landslides identified in the landslide inventory. The obtained results allow us to conclude that 70 % of the future landslides should occur in these areas, classified as most susceptible to landslides corresponding to 20.3 % of the total area of Municipality. Thus, the consideration of these 20.3 % as regards prevention and protection of landslide risk could potentially reduce damage resulting from 70 % of future landslides in the Loures Municipality.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the MapRisk Project (PTDC/GEO/68227/2006), financed by the Foundation for Science and the Technology (FCT), and by the Développement d’Outils pour le Suivi des Mouvements de Sols dans le but d’aider au développement durable de la région SUDOE, (DO-SMS-SOE1/P2/F157), Interreg IV B. The first author is a PhD fellow funded by FCT (SFRH/BD/64973/2009). We are grateful to five anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped to improve the quality of this paper.

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  1. Centro de Estudos Geográficos, Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    Clemence Guillard & Jose Zezere

  2. Centro de Estudos Geográficos Edifício da Faculdade de Letras Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214, Lisboa, Portugal

    Clemence Guillard

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  1. Clemence Guillard
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  2. Jose Zezere
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Correspondence to Clemence Guillard.

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Guillard, C., Zezere, J. Landslide Susceptibility Assessment and Validation in the Framework of Municipal Planning in Portugal: The Case of Loures Municipality. Environmental Management 50, 721–735 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-012-9921-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-012-9921-7

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