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GIS‐based regional landslide susceptibility mapping: a case study in southern California

Landslides threaten lives and property throughout the United States, causing in excess of $2 billion in damages and 25–50 deaths annually. In regions subjected to urban expansion caused by population growth and/or increased storm intensities caused by changing climate patterns, the economic and society costs of landslides will continue to rise. Using a geographic information system (GIS), this paper develops and implements a multivariate statistical approach for mapping landslide susceptibility. The presented susceptibility maps are intended to help in the design of hazard mitigation and land development policies at regional scales. The paper presents (a) a GIS‐based multivariate statistical approach for mapping landslide susceptibility, (b) several dimensionless landslide susceptibility indexes developed to quantify and weight the influence of individual categories for given potential risk factors on landslides and (c) a case study in southern California, which uses 11 111 seismic landslide scars collected from previous efforts and 5389 landslide scars newly digitized from local geologic maps. In the case study, seven potential risk factors were selected to map landslide susceptibility. Ground slope and event precipitation were the most important factors, followed by land cover, surface curvature, proximity to fault, elevation and proximity to coastline. The developed landslide susceptibility maps show that areas classified as having high or very high susceptibilities contained 71% of the digitized landslide scars and 90% of the seismic landslide scars while only occupying 26% of the total study area. These areas mostly have ground slopes higher than 46% and 2‐year, 6‐hour precipitation greater than 51 mm. Only 12% of digitized landslides and less than 1% of recorded seismic landslides were located in areas classified as low or very low susceptibility, while occupying 42% of the total study region. These areas mostly have slopes less than 27% and 2‐year, 6‐hour precipitation less than 41 mm. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.