Investigating factors affecting the occurrence of mass movements using Multivariate Linear Regression (Case study: Abidar watershed)

Investigating the factors affecting the occurrence of mass movements, help to identify sensitive areas and providing solutions and ways to control and proper management, partly to prevent the occurrence of mass movements. This research tried to recognize the factor affecting the occurrence of mass movements in the Forest Park Abidar watershed. In this research, information layers including lithology, elevation, slope gradient, aspect, rainfall, land use, rivers, faults, roads, soil and landslides distribution, is prepared by use of geographical information system (GIS), topographic maps, aerial photographs and field study. Then, factors affecting the occurrence of mass movements are recognized by using the method of multivariate linear regression. The use of multivariate linear regression is to find the best fitting function to describe the relationship between the mass movements (dependent variable) and a set of environmental parameters (independent variables). The effect of each parameter on mass movements occurrence is assessed from the corresponding coefficient that appears in the regression function. The interpretations of the coefficients showed that lithology, soil, land use, distance from road, distance from faults, distance from rivers, play a major role in determining landslide occurrence and distribution in study area.