Premium
Quantifying the Effect of Precipitation on Landslide Hazard in Urbanized and Non‐Urbanized Areas
Author(s) -
Johnston Elizabeth C.,
Davenport Frances V.,
Wang Lijing,
Caers Jef K.,
Muthukrishnan Suresh,
Burke Marshall,
Diffenbaugh Noah S.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2021gl094038
Subject(s) - landslide , urbanization , precipitation , hazard , bay , environmental science , climatology , climate change , hazard analysis , physical geography , geography , geology , meteorology , oceanography , seismology , ecology , engineering , biology , aerospace engineering
Although most landslides are precipitation‐triggered, a number of other complex conditions simultaneously predispose any given slope to failure, with the impact of urbanization posing particular scientific challenges. We use panel regression with fixed effects—which controls for observed and unobserved time‐variant and time‐invariant influences—to quantify the effect of precipitation accumulation on landslide concentration across the Pacific Coast region of the United States. We find that landslide hazard is most sensitive to precipitation variations in urbanized areas. This finding is robust across 1‐day, 10‐day, and 30‐day periods of precipitation accumulation, among individual Pacific Coast states, and when the analysis is confined to the San Francisco Bay Area (a subregion with both urban and rural areas). Our results corroborate existing hypotheses that urbanization increases landslide hazard, while demonstrating the importance of considering interactions with urbanization when predicting landslide hazard in the current climate, and under climate change scenarios.