Human Settlement Pressure Drives Slow‐Moving Landslide Exposure
Abstract A rapidly growing population across mountain regions is pressuring expansion onto steeper slopes, leading to increased exposure of people and their assets to slow‐moving landslides. These moving hillslopes can inflict damage to buildings and infrastructure, accelerate with urban alterations, and catastrophically fail with climatic and weather extremes. Yet, systematic estimates of slow‐moving landslide exposure and their drivers have been elusive. Here, we present a new global database of 7,764 large (A ≥ 0.1 km 2 ) slow‐moving landslides across nine IPCC regions. Using high‐resolution human settlement footprint data, we identify 563 inhabited landslides. We estimate that 9% of reported slow‐moving landslides are inhabited, in a given basin, and have 12% of their areas occupied by human settlements, on average. We find the density of settlements on unstable slopes decreases in basins more affected by slow‐moving landslides, but varies across regions with greater flood exposure. Across most regions, urbanization can be a relevant driver of slow‐moving landslide exposure, while steepness and flood exposure have regionally varying influences. In East Asia, slow‐moving landslide exposure increases with urbanization, gentler slopes, and less flood exposure. Our findings quantify how disparate knowledge creates uncertainty that undermines an assessment of the drivers of slow‐moving landslide exposure in mountain regions, facing a future of rising risk, such as Central Asia, Northeast Africa, and the Tibetan Plateau.
Authors
- Alexander L. Handwerger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9235-3871)
- Norbert Marwan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1437-7039)
- Yi Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3215-7187)
- Oliver Korup (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9084-1895)
- Marcel Hürlimann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0119-1438)
- Kanayim Teshebaeva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7931-6937)
- Lisa Köhler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3412-8914)
- Annegret H. Thieken (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7068-2615)
- Alexandra Urgilez Vinueza (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9328-6615)
- Guilherme Samprogna Mohor (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2348-6181)
- Tomáš Pánek (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2857-3727)
- Joaquin V. Ferrer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8020-0285)
- Cristina Reyes‐Carmona (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8325-4350)
- Chaoying Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5730-9602)
- Valentino Demurtas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4187-0902)
- Ching‐Ying Tsou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3848-8809)
- Jürgen Kurths (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5926-4276)
- Olivier Dewitte (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4593-7505)
Institutions
- Royal Museum for Central Africa (BE)
- University of Alicante (ES)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (DE)
- Hirosaki University (JP)
- University of Cagliari (IT)
- University of Potsdam (DE)
- University of Ostrava (CZ)
- Chang'an University (CN)
- Leibniz Association (DE)
- GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (DE)
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
- University of Milano-Bicocca (IT)
- Lanzhou University (CN)
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (ES)
- Delft University of Technology (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Earth s Future
- Published
- 2024-09-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2024ef004830
- Citations
- 13
- Primary Topic
- Landslides and related hazards
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 9.23
Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Universität Potsdam