Unraveling the drivers of intensified landslide regimes in Western Ghats, India

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2021-05, Vol.770, p.145357-145357, Article 145357
• Main Authors: Yunus, Ali P., Fan, Xuanmei, Subramanian, Srikrishnan Siva, Jie, Dou, Xu, Qiang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropogenic impacts; Extreme rainfall; Landslide hazards; Western Ghats
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145357

The Western Ghats (WG) mountain range in the Indian sub-continent is a biodiversity hotspot, now faces a severe threat to the valley population and ecosystem because of changing rainfall patterns and land-use changes. Here, we use the 2018–2019 landslide inventory data together with various geo-environmental factors and show that the landslide activity in the WG region is amplified by anthropogenic disturbances. We applied a generalized feature selection algorithm and a random forest susceptibility model to demonstrate the major topographic controls of landslides and the risk associated with them in the WG region. Our results show that road cutting and slopes modified to plantations are the strongest environmental variable (50% - 73% within 300 m buffer distance) related to the landslide patterns, whereas short-duration intense precipitation in the high elevated terrain, profile concavity, and stream power contributed to the initiation of landslides. The susceptibility models made for the present, and Global Climate Models (GCM) under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario predicts the vulnerable nature of WG for future climate extremes. Our results highlight the impacts of Anthropocene hazards and sensitivity of the WG ecosystem, and a greater focus therefore should be placed to reduce the vulnerability and increase preparedness for future events. [Display omitted] •By machine learning we identified the major controls of landslides in Western Ghats.•Anthropogenic disturbances exaggerated the rates of rainfall-triggered landslides.•We developed a landslide susceptibility map for the present (2018) and future scenarios (RCP 8.5).•An enhanced or similar to present landslide rates could be witnessed in future.