Occurrence of landslide events and the role of climate in the twentieth century in Calabria, southern Italy

Abstract

A methodological approach based on analysing landslides that occurred over a long period and climatic data characterizing that period is presented. The method investigates whether there are any effects of climate on landslide triggering. The approach has been tested in Calabria (Italy). Both landslide and climatic data have been obtained from available databases that have been expanded. Landslide data came from historical archives and newspapers, whereas the climatic analysis is based on daily and monthly series of rainfall and temperature. The method simplifies the comparative analysis of several time series by defining some indices (the monthly, bi-monthly ... m-monthly indices of precipitation, temperature, wet days and precipitation, and the monthly landslide number) that can be used to study phenomena, such as landslides, that are characterized by spatial and temporal variability. For Calabria, the number of landslides is correlated to monthly precipitation, wet days and precipitation intensity. Thus, landslide occurrence could be roughly forecast using these climatic data. Despite the favourable climatic trend, landslides are not decreasing because the recent utilization of landslide-prone areas increases the vulnerability.