The relationship between landslide activity and weather: examples from Hungary

The paper presents the impact of irregular rainfall events triggering landslides in the regional context of landslides in Hungary. The author’s experience, gathered from decades of observations, confirms that landslide processes are strongly correlate with precipitation events in all three landscape types (hill regions of unconsolidated sediments; high bluffs along river banks and lake shores; mountains of Tertiary stratovolcanoes). Case studies for each landscape type underline that new landslides are triggered and old ones are reactivated by extreme winter precipitation events. This assertion is valid mainly for shallow and translational slides. Wet autumns favour landsliding, while the triggering influence of intense summer rainfalls is of a subordinate nature. A recent increasing problem lies in the fact that on previously unstable slopes, stabilised during longer dry intervals, an intensive cultivation starts, thus increasing the damage caused by movements during relatively infrequent wet winters.