Abstract
Slopes covered with unsaturated shallow pyroclastic deposits, lying upon fractured limestone bedrock, are widespread in the mountains around Naples (southern Italy). Rainfall infiltration, reducing soil suction, eventually triggers shallow landslides. While drastic reduction of suction is unanimously recognized as the triggering mechanism, there is still debate about the hydrological processes controlling slope drainage and causing the establishment of landslide predisposing conditions. Field observations at the slope of Cervinara suggested that temporary storage of water in a perched aquifer, in the upper part of the fractured bedrock, may affect the leakage through the soil-bedrock interface. Hence, a physically based model, coupling flows in the unsaturated soil cover and in the perched aquifer, has been applied to three large rainfall events which occurred in December 1999 (when a landslide was triggered), January 2009, and November 2012. The results highlight that the different responses of soil and aquifer to precipitations, related not only to rainfall event characteristics (i.e., duration and mean intensity) but also to the initial conditions of the slope, determined by antecedent precipitations, can play a prominent role in the triggering of landslides. In fact, further simulations with synthetic rainfall events and different initial conditions provide a possible interpretation of the triggering of the landslide of December 1999, indicating that a soil profile with dry conditions at the base and a low level in the perched aquifer, typical of late autumn, can impede the drainage of infiltrating water through the soil-bedrock interface, thus favoring the build-up of pore pressure within the soil cover.
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Funding
This study is funded by the State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection Open Fund “Project Number SKLGP2019KO08,” and the State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection Independent Research Project (SKLGP2019Z002). The field monitoring station at the base of this research has been also funded by the Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Universitá e della Ricerca Scientifica (MIUR), as a PRIN 2015 project titled “Innovative Monitoring and Design Strategies for Sustainable Landslide Risk Mitigation”. The research has been also funded by Università degli Studi della Campania “L. Vanvitelli” through the programme “VALERE: VAnviteLli pEr la RicErca”.
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This research is part of the Ph.D. project “Modelling hydrological processes causing fast debris flows for the development of early warning systems” granted by Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” within the Ph.D. course “Ambiente, Design e Innovazione” XXXIII Cycle.
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Marino, P., Santonastaso, G.F., Fan, X. et al. Prediction of shallow landslides in pyroclastic-covered slopes by coupled modeling of unsaturated and saturated groundwater flow. Landslides 18, 31–41 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-020-01484-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-020-01484-6