PREDICTING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATIC CHANGE ON SLOPE STABILITY USING DOWNSCALED CLIMATE DATA AND SLOPE HYDROLOGY/STABILITY MODELS

Buma, J.T. (Department of Geography, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands), Collison, A.J.C. (Department of Geography, King's College London, UK), Dehn, M. (Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany), van Asch, T.W.J. (Department of Geography, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands)

A major effect of man-induced climate change could be a higher frequency of extreme rainfall events in Europe. Consequently, the frequency of landslides could increase, in turn affecting erosion and deposition regimes of upland areas. Assessment of this effect on a landslide scale is difficult, due to regional variations in magnitude of climate change across Europe as well as different landslide triggering mechanisms. A potential method for predicting climate change impact on landsliding is to link physically-based slope hydrology/stability models to climate scenarios obtained through downscaling General Circulation Models (GCM). A case study (Barcelonnette, French Alps) is presented, in which two hydrology/slope stability model couples are compared and evaluated. This paper is part of the CEC Environment Research Programme on "Temporal stability and activity of landslides in Europe with respect to climatic change (TESLEC)", contract No EV5V - CT94-0454

This paper is part of the CEC Environment Research Programme on "Temporal stability and activity of landslides in Europe with respect to climatic change (TESLEC)", contract No EV5V - CT94-0454