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Mapping of slow landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula using the California landslide inventory and persistent scatterer interferometry

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Abstract

Extremely slow landslides, those with a displacement rate <16 mm/year, may be imperceptible without proper instrumentation. These landslides can cause infrastructure damage on a long-term timescale. The objective is to identify these landslides through the combination of information from the California landslide inventory (CLI) and ground displacement rates using results from persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI), an interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) stacking technique, across the Palos Verdes Peninsula in California. A total of 34 ENVISAT radar images (acquired between 2005 and 2010) and 40 COSMO-SkyMed radar images (acquired between 2012 and 2014) were processed. An InSAR landslide inventory (ILI) is created using four criteria: minimum PS count, average measured ground velocity, slope angle, and slope aspect. The ILI is divided into four categories: long-term slides (LTSs), potentially active slides (PASs), relatively stable slopes (RSSs), and unmapped extremely slow slides (UESSs). These categories are based on whether landslides were previously mapped on that slope (in the CLI), if persistent scatterers (PSs) are present, and whether PSs are unstable or stable. The final inventory includes 263 mapped landslides across the peninsula, of them 67 landslides were identified as UESS. Although UESS exhibit low velocity and are relatively small (average area of 8865 m2 per slide), their presence in a highly populated area such as the Palos Verdes Peninsula could lead to destruction of infrastructure and property over the long term.

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Acknowledgements

The study was funded through the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program (proposal: 16-EARTH16F-0086). Data were provided by many agencies and organizations. COSMO-SkyMed radar images were originally acquired by the Italian Space Agency and provided to the authors by the European Space Agency (proposal ID 31684). ENVISAT radar images were acquired and provided by the European Space Agency (proposal ID 82169). The California Landslide Inventory GIS shapefile for the Palos Verdes Peninsula was provided by the California Geological Survey, a division of the California Department of Conservation. Three digital elevation models were used: Shuttle Radar Topography Mission model is a product of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer model is a product of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry; a 1/3 arc-second (10-m) NED DEM from the USGS. Three-component (vertical, north, and east) displacement time-series composing the four GPS time-series were downloaded from the UNAVCO Data Archive Interface Version 2. The background image displayed in Figs. 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8 were provided by the USGS, NASA, Google, and Digital Globe. The authors would finally like to thank the Landslide editors and two reviewers for their comments and assistance.

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  1. Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, 49931, USA

    El Hachemi Bouali, Thomas Oommen & Rüdiger Escobar-Wolf

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Bouali, E.H., Oommen, T. & Escobar-Wolf, R. Mapping of slow landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula using the California landslide inventory and persistent scatterer interferometry. Landslides 15, 439–452 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-017-0882-z

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