Self-organized criticality of significant fording landslides in Three Gorges Reservoir area, China

The self-organized criticality of significant fording landslides in Three Gorges Reservoir is analyzed to improve the understanding of their spatial distribution. Such self-organized criticality will provide a new method to research fording landslides, and it will also provide a reference for studying the development and risk assessment of fording landslides in Three Gorges Reservoir. The relationship between the significant fording landslides and the impact of factors such as strata, weak interbed, reservoir structure, reservoir water level, and rainstorm, is qualitatively analyzed. Reservoir water and rainstorm play a dominant role in reactivating the significant fording landslides. The frequency–magnitude distribution of significant fording landslides is quantitatively analyzed by using the power-law, double Pareto, and inverse gamma functions. The frequency–magnitude distribution of significant fording landslides in Three Gorges Reservoir partly follows a power-law distribution, and it still exhibits a rollover. The cause of this rollover cannot be attributed to data deviation and has little relationship to the classification by trigger mechanism, the composition materials, strata, or river bank structure. The power-law function does not reflect the rollover; however, the double Pareto and inverse gamma functions are superior to the power-law function in terms of fitting precision. The adaptability of the inverse gamma function is better when the data are fewer. The significant fording landslides in Three Gorges Reservoir exhibit self-organized criticality.