Reactivation of an old landslide in north–central Iran following reservoir impoundment

Results from multisensor satellite time-series analysis

authored by

Magdalena Vassileva, Mahdi Motagh, Sigrid Roessner, Zhuge Xia

Abstract

Water impoundment combined with more frequent precipitation extremes due to climate change increases landslide hazards on the slopes surrounding dam reservoirs. In situ monitoring systems in these potential landslide-prone areas are often unavailable, making landslide failures challenging to forecast. This paper describes a multisensor and multivariate remote sensing approach using data from Envisat, Sentinel-1, Landsat and PlanetScope satellites to reconstruct the spatiotemporal evolution of the mechanism and causes of the March 2019 landslide failure backside of the dam reservoir in Hoseynabad-e Kalpush village, north–central Iran. Statistical analysis and time series clustering are performed to derive the main landslide kinematic features from multitemporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar (MT-InSAR) analysis. We also exploit GIS and wavelet analysis to correlate potential external driving factors with landslide kinematics. Envisat and Sentinel-1 MT-InSAR analyses revealed that a previously stable old landslide was reactivated following reservoir impoundment in early 2013. As the reservoir water level rose during the following years up to 34 m in 2019, the landslide displacement rate gradually increased from 3.5 cm/yr to 8.4 cm/yr, and the destabilization gradually propagated upslope. At this stage, seasonal precipitation effects were detected only in the vertical component, indicating swelling and shrinkage movements of the shallower soil layer. The reactivated landslide accelerated and catastrophically failed following the exceptional precipitation in early 2019, producing a horizontal shift of >40 m, detected with optical image digital correlation. In the aftermath, the landslide continued to move with a decreasing trend until final stabilization in October 2021. Our study demonstrates how combined observations derived from multisensor satellite remote sensing data can be used to assess landslide precursors and kinematics, as well as the influence of climatic and anthropogenic factors on the instability of slopes surrounding water reservoirs. This is especially relevant in data-scarce areas.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Photogrammetry and GeoInformation (IPI)

External Organisation(s)

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ)

Type

Article

Journal

Engineering geology

Volume

327

ISSN

0013-7952

Publication date

20.12.2023

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology, Geology

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2023.107337 (Access: Closed)