GETSI Teaching Materials >Planning for Failure: Landslide Analysis > Student Materials
GETSI's Earth-focused Modules and Courses for the Undergraduate Classroom
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This module is part of a growing collection of classroom-tested materials developed by GETSI. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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For the Instructor

This material supports the Planning for Failure: Landslide Analysis GETSI Module. If you would like your students to have access to this material, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing GETSI teaching materials.

Welcome Students!

The impact of a mass movement event (landslide) can be extensive, including the loss of life, destruction of infrastructure, damage to land, and loss of natural resources. The purpose of this module is to familiarize you to empirical methods of mass movement hazard mapping. You will explore mass movement detection from elevation datasets, the distributive pattern of mass movements in a region, and the development and analysis of predictive models (susceptibility maps) culminating in the generation of a risk analysis report and management plan. Understanding the metrics of landslide sites is an important first step to plan intelligently for future development. By the end of the module you will be able to:

  1. Process, analyze, and interpret geodetic data to identify and classify mass wasting sites, and connect their development to environmental factors.
  2. Quantitatively model landslide susceptibility by evaluating the relationship between mass wasting event sites and local geospatial factors..
  3. Synthesize susceptibility models with environmental, social, and political considerations to develop a comprehensive landslide risk assessment.

Unit 1: Mass Wasting Identification and Quantification

How can geoscientists identify and quantify landslide events using remote sensing data? The analysis of mass wasting events from remotely sensed data is a complicated task, burdened by the range of geomorphic signatures associated with different types of events and the resolution of digital imagery and remotely sensed data. In this unit, you will use high-resolution elevation data (LiDAR and SfM sourced) and satellite digital imagery to identify and quantify landslide size and volume. To increase your recognition of geomorphic features associated with landslides, you will experiment with image processing tools (e.g. - slope, curvature, etc.). The goal of this unit is to familiarize you to the techniques needed to assess landslide sites that affect human systems and infrastructure. The effects of landslides can result in the isolation of communities, loss of power and water utilities, and loss of communication services. Better understanding the nature of landslides is the first step towards helping mitigate their detrimental effects to communities.

Unit 2: Examining the Distribution of Mass Wasting Events

Why do landslides occur in some areas and not others? In this unit, you will explore which factors contribute to the distribution patterns of mass wasting events. You will use a frequency-ratio method, one of the most common quantitative methods used in the statistical analysis of landslides, to explore the relationship between geospatial factors/parameters and the distribution of landslide events. In order to do so, you will categorize geospatial factors (e.g. - elevation, slope, aspect, bedrock geology, mean annual precipitation, etc.) and calculate landslide susceptibility index (LSI) values for each category. The LSI is based on the frequency of landslides and areal extent of each category and can be used to quantitatively estimate the relationship between the spatial distribution of landslides and each geospatial factor explored.

Unit 3: Develop and Test Models of Landslide Susceptibility

Landslide susceptibility maps describe the relative likelihood of future landslide events within a given area. How do geoscientists confidently create landslide susceptibility maps based on empirical data? In this unit, you will use a combination of some, or all, of your landslide susceptibility values calculated in Unit 2, to model and statistically validate landslide susceptibility maps. From your model validations, you will then propose and defend a final landslide susceptibility map to be adopted for use in risk assessment.

Unit 4: Analyze and Prescribe a Risk Assessment and Hazard Mitigation Plan

How can community stakeholders use your landslide susceptibility model you developed in Unit 3 to inform planning and infrastructure decisions? In this unit, you will create a landslide risk analysis report and assessment plan for a specific region, considering a suite of environmental, social, and political factors. This unit is a culmination of your experiences from prior units within this module. Specifically, this unit will require your reflection on landslide detection protocols (Unit 1), factor categories that correlate to the distributive pattern of landslides in a region (Unit 2), and the development of a susceptibility map (Unit 3) in conjunction with considerations of earth processes, infrastructure, and sociopolitical factors (policy, budgets, cultural preservation) associated with hazard mitigation.


     

This module is part of a growing collection of classroom-tested materials developed by GETSI. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »