Landslide susceptibility assessment in active seismic zone - With a case study of Wenchuan

The Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, occurred on 12 May 2008 in Sichuan Province, caused enormous property damages and human casualties. Right now, the secondary disasters caused by strong earthquake, especially landslides, have drawn much attention in the affected area. For this reason, it is necessary to research on susceptibility assessment in Wenchuan which is helpful to decrease landslide damage during recovery. Recent investigators have suggested that statistical (rather than physically based) approaches that correlate numerous factors with landslide occurrence are best suited. However, most of researches are focusing on rainfall triggered landslides which are different from earthquake influenced landslides. In the present study, Wenchuan County, the heavily affected area in the earthquake, was selected as the study area (Fig.1). The main target is to analyze the correlation of landslides with influencing factors and evaluate the landslide hazards in the study area with Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), information method and logistic regression models.