Total water content thresholds for shallow landslides, Outer Western Carpathians

 

Abstract:

Shallow landslides are fairly frequent natural processes which emerge as a result of both rainfall and rapid snowmelt in the Flysch Belt of the Outer Western Carpathians. We estimated the total water content thresholds for the previously defined seven phases of increased landsliding which took place between 1939 and 2010 around the Napajedla meteorological station. The time series were reconstructed on the basis of data from surrounding stations. Rainfalls with the highest intensities (>1 mm/min) were removed from the set. Rainfall of such an intensity primarily causes overland flow and soil erosion and does not contribute to landslide threshold. The snow water equivalent was computed on the basis of the snow height, and possible errors were evaluated as interval estimations. An interval of 10 days before a landslide phase was selected for the total water content threshold. The resulting lower boundary (67.0 mm/10 days) and upper boundary (163.3 mm/10 days) thresholds of water infiltrated into soil during an event shall be part of the prepared online warning system in this area.

 

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10346-015-0570-9#page-1