Abstract

We investigate the instability of slopes in a 15.6 km2 catchment area in the Southern Apennine mountains(Italy) traversed by a mid-slope road and characterized by predominance of clay-rich flysch units. High resolutionmultispectral satellite imagery is used to identify active landslides, to investigate their close associationwith seasonally wet zones (areas covered by free surface-water including ponds, migrating surfacewater,seeps), as well as to guide subsurface hydrogeological investigations. By combining the remotelysensed surface information and the extensive subsurface dataset from over 40 monitoring piezometer boreholeswe demonstrate that many wet zones initially mapped from the IKONOS imagery are indicative of siteswith seasonally persistent very high groundwater levels within landslide-prone slopes and on intermittentlyactive landslides. Where such surface-subsurface water linkage can be established, the appearance of the wetzones (fully saturated ground/soil) resulting from groundwater discharge or seepage can be used as a forewarningsignal of the increased susceptibility to landsliding, since the hillslopes with shallow groundwatertables are generally more prone to failure. The information about changing surface-water conditions retrievedfrom high resolution satellite data timely acquired during rainy seasons can thus provide crucialinput for temporal and spatial landslide hazard assessments. We anticipate that in the near future highresolution optical space-borne remote sensing will become a commonly used tool for monitoring landslideactivity and for providing temporal series of spatial data necessary to improve our understanding of causativeand triggering processes leading to slope failures.

Autore Pugliese

• Casarano Domenico , Wasowski Janusz

Tutti gli autori

• Wasowski J.; Lamanna C.; Gigante G.; Casarano D.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Remote sensing of environment

Anno di pubblicazione

2012

ISSN

0034-4257

ISBN

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Wos

Nessuna citazione

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Numero di citazioni Scopus

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Settori ERC

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Codici ASJC

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