Landslide characterization in Central America

This phase started with the collection and integration of historical and recent available landslide events in the form of spatial and thematic data. Landslide information was collected from historical documents, newspapers, technical reports, and landslide inventory maps prepared after Hurricane Mitch (1998). The information contained in the database (first update) was used for descriptive analysis at national and regional scales to define the spatial and temporal distribution, types of mass movements, and triggering mechanisms and to analyze the influence of topographic (elevation, slope angle, slope aspect) and lithological parameters on the occurrence of landslides.

In the second part "Statistical analysis of Nicaraguan landslides" landslide data from the Nicaraguan database and a few data from other Central American countries have been used to analyze, through empirical-statistical methods, the relationships between the most important parameters of landslides and in particular debris flows in order to predict run-out distance, necessary for debris flow hazards assessment. The relations proposed will be compared with similar relationships available in the literature and used to calibrate numerical simulation models.

In the third part "Use of mechanical/dynamical models to back-analyze one or more Nicaraguan debris flows" the Casita lahar has been chosen to reconstruct the mode and sequence of the 1998 flank failure in order to understand the mechanism of the landslide. The remaining slope instability will be modeled as well.

Plans

This PhD is to be finished in early 2007.

Ph. D. student

• Graziella Devoli.

Project leader

• Kaare Høeg

Other collaborators

• Anders Elverhøi
• Farrokh Nadim
• Fabio De Blasio
• B. Romstad
• B. Etzelmuller

External research Institutes

• INETER (Managua, Nicaragua)
• Department of Geography, University of Oslo