1.

INTRODUCTION:
Landslides are one of the most common and widespread natural hazards that affect at least 15%
of the land area of our country, an area which exceeds 0.49 million km2 . Landslides of different
types are frequent in geodynamical active domains in the Himalaya. Landslide is an important
landform building process promoting soil formation and most habitations in the hills are located
in the proximity of old stabilized landslides as these provide suitable land for agricultural
operations. Direct losses due to landslides have been increasing and frequent disruption of
transport network by landslides has been highlighted as a major hindrance in economic well-
being of the region. Present study is an attempt to analyse the causes of landslides in the
uttarakhand that meets Bhagirathi River at Devprayag to form Ganga River. Landslides occur in a
variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients:
from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater. Himalaya is one of the new folded
mountain systems of the world . In uttarakhand landslide to occur, but there are other factors
affecting slope stability which produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In
many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as a heavy rainfall, an earthquake,
a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable. Landslides
are a serious geologic hazard. A landslide is the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth
down a slope due to gravity. The study is initiated with the mapping of landslides in the upper
uttarakhand and the same is followed by the correlation of these with different natural and man-
made feature to assess the influence of these on the occurrence of landslides. This is intended to
help in formulating of a viable strategy for minimizing the menace of landslides. In the previous
some years, mainly due to extreme precipitation events, landslides have however become major
cause of concern. Losses due to landslides and flash floods in Uttarakhand .

2. LAND SLIDE OF THE STUDY AREA:

The part of Uttarakhand state has been selected as a study area. It lies between latitudes
29°56’38’’N to 30°09’37’’N and longitudes 78°29’01’E to 78°37’06”E covering an area of about
323,815 m². The area lies in seismic Zone - IV and V and receives heavy precipitation during
monsoon season. The study area is situated in subtropical moon soon region which frequently
experiences heavy rainfall. The heavy rainfall usually occurs in monsoon season. The annual mean
rainfall varies from 770 mm to 1684 mm.
Broadly, in this study area, there are four types of land cover including dense forest, non-forest,
open-forest, and scrub land. Non-forest covers the biggest area with 39.02 %, followed by dense-
forest (31.96 %), open-forest (22.36 %), and scrub land (6.67 %), respectively.
Topographically, the study area is mountainous having very high mountain ranges. Elevation
ranges from 380 m to 2180 m above the sea level, with average elevation of 1,081 m. Most of
area falls above elevation 900 m. Slope angles in this area are smaller than 70 degrees. Most of
the slope angles are in classes of 15 – 25 degrees (21.34 %), 25 – 35 degrees (38.08 %), 35 – 45
degrees (26.03 %). There is only 2.89 % in very gentle slope angles smaller than 8 degrees.

The area is at the same time strategically important and well connected by road network of
which National Highway 58 and 109 are an integral part. The area is visited by large number of
people every year and the same contributes to the economy of the region.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW:
The topic of land slide provides a review on the literature study done to obtain an understanding of various
components of landslide hazard studies. It reviews the different literatures providing the definitions
related to the term landslides itself followed by it classification types and possible causes of initiation of
such a hazardous phenomenon in and around us. The topic also reviews the different approaches adapted
for quantification of landslide hazard from different domain and possible combinations determining
rather significant hazard scenarios. Commented [IA1]:

3.1.LAND SLIDES:
The term “landslide” describes a variety of processes that result in the downward and outward
movement of slope-forming materials including rock, soil, artificial fill, or a combination of these which
are basically different forms of mass wasting process active over land surface. It is kind of “gravitate
transfer producing immediate and perceptible modification of earth’s surface” (Thorn bury, 1954). The
most popular definition of landslides is given as the “the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth
down a slope (Cru den, 1991) which encompasses different sort of slope failure processes observed in
nature. These huge varieties of landslides present in nature involves some definite criteria for
classification of slides. Verne’s, 1978 emphasized on the inclusion of parameters like type of movement
and type of material displaced while classifying the slides. Sliding involves a continuous contact of the
moving mass with surface while fall denotes loss of contact of the moving mass with surface. On the other
hand, flow is a continuous movement of weathered material accompanied by surface water which rather
is responsible for the initiation of the movement.

Landslides can be further grouped in to several types related to its age (Cruden and Varnes, 1996).
Regarding the age of slides or its state of activity, distribution and style they are differentiated as active,
reactivated, suspended, inactive; advancing, retrogressive, widening, enlarging confined, diminishing,
moving; complex, composite, multiple, successive and single respectively. This variety of classification is
adapted for comprehensive investigation of such a complex natural process which is essentially an
endeavor in the direction of constructing a useful database as a foundation of expert system of landslide
mitigation.

3.2.Landslide identification and mapping:

Landslide mapping is the preliminary step towards landslide hazard studies. It is done to obtain different
landslide inventory maps those generally serve as the raw material for producing various hazard seniors.
Accurate mapping of a landslide in terms of magnitude is still a challenge to scientific community and
therefore enormous scope of research is lying in finding out both the manual and automated way of
accurate and precised identification as well as mapping.

4.Methodology:
Methodology in this study was carried out in six steps : (i) data collection and interpretation, (ii)
preparing of the landslide conditioning factors and landslide inventory map and creating of the
training and testing datasets as inputs for landslide susceptibility modeling, (iii) considering of
influence of the eleven conditioning factors on landslide occurrence using linear support vector
machine, (iv) applying the NB, MLP Neural Nets, and FT models to assess the susceptibility of
landslides in the study area, (v) evaluating and comparing the performance of these models using
the success rate and predictive rate curves, (vi) generating landslide susceptibility maps, and
selecting of the best model in the study area.
Fig1: Methodological flow chart employed in this study
5.RESULT:
This section is divided into the subsections. It provides a concise and precise description of the
aim of this study. It is aimed at proposing a reliable GIS-MCDA BW methodology for the landslide
susceptibility mapping, which could serve as a useful tool for preventing and reducing
The various thematic data layers representing the landslide conditioning factors, such as the
slope, the aspect, the elevation, lithology, the land use/cover, the distance to faults, the distance
to rivers, the distance to roads, the topographic wetness index (TWI), the stream power index
(SPI), the sediment transport index (STI), rainfall, the distance to urban areas, the soil type, and
the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), were prepared. These factors fall under the
three categories of the conditioning factors that make the area susceptible to movement without
actually initiating a landslide; thus, these factors are considered to be responsible for the
occurrence of landslides in the regions for which pertinent data can be collected from the
available resources and from the field. The triggering factor, such as rainfall, sets the movement
off by shifting the slope from a marginally stable to an actively unstable area. Furthermore, the
attributes of the ground in terms of landslide susceptibility were considered in the present study.

5.1. Landslide Inventory Map:

The mapping of the actual landslides in the study area is essential for describing the relationship
between the landslide distribution and the conditioning factors. In order to produce a detailed
and reliable landslide inventory map, extensive field surveys and observations were performed
in the study area. A total of 1082 landslides were identified and mapped in the study area by
evaluating the aerial photos supported by the field survey. Also, we used the National Landslide
Database of the Republic of Serbia within the BEWARE project, which represents a standardized
post-event landslide database. The landslide standard spatial database contains data such as the
exact location of the landslide, the width, length, depth, and volume of the landslide, the average
slope data of the terrain on which the landslide is located, the general information on the
landslide process, the type of the occurrence, the trend of the movement, the type of the
triggered material, water content, the movement speed, the activity, the mode of the movement,
as well as the terrain, vulnerability, and the landslide photos.

5.2. Conditioning Factors:

The landslide hazard evaluation criteria selection is an important step in the analysis. It is
essential to identify the landslide conditioning factors in order to create a reliable landslide
susceptibility map. Based on the experts’ opinions and longer observations from the field, this
study adopted the fifteen criteria that are an important cause of the landslide susceptibility
assessment.
The selected criteria, together with a brief description of the same, are shown in following figure.
Figure 2: The topographical factors related to landslides: (a) the elevation; (b) the aspect; (c)
the slope; (d) the topographic wetness index (TWI); (e) the stream power index (SPI); (f) the
sediment transport index (STI).
Figure 4: The environmental factors related to landslides: (a) the soil type, (b) the distance to
the river, (c) lithology, (d) the distance to faults, (e) the NDVI, (f) rainfall.