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Introduction to the thematic volume: issues in landslide process monitoring and understanding

Introduction au volume thématique : thèmes de recherche pour la surveillance et la compréhension des glissements de terrain

¹ Laboratoire de Géographie Physique et de l’Environnement (LETG-Geophen), UMR 6554 CNRS-UCBN, Esplanade de la Paix, F-14032 Caen cedex, France. Tel. +33 (0)231 565 608 – Fax. +33 (0)231 566 384 – E-mail: jean-philippe.malet@unicaen.fr
² Domaines Océaniques, UMR 6538 CNRS-IUEM-UBO, Place Copernic, F-29280, Plouzané, France.
³ Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Impliquant la Géologie et la Mécanique (LIRIGM), EA 3111 UJF, Maison des Géosciences, BP 53, F-38041 Grenoble cedex 9, France.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	SPECIAL NATURE OF LANDSLIDES, AND THE FRENCH ‘SAMOA’ PROJECT

 
All mountainous countries have been exposed to slope movements throughout their history, reaching often disastrous dimensions. A significant increase in damage effects had to be recognised within the last two decades. The reasons for this steady increase in damage are often relayed on a probable impact of climate change. But people contribute also to, and even may exacerbate, or modify the hazard. The increase of our living standards, the concentration of people, infrastructure and goods at economically privileged but probably hazardous places, additional settlements in disaster prone regions and the enormous increase in mobility on road and train have to be considered as well. The number of victims and the cost of the damage may be high, depending on the duration, spatial extension and magnitude of the processes, and on the vulnerability of the exposed environment.

Even though considerable advances in the last decade have been gained in landslide process understanding (landslide databases and event catalogues, monitoring techniques, investigation tools), there are a series of gaps that should be filled in existing knowledge in order to apply this knowledge for long-term development of the mountain territories and safety of the citizens. This is mainly the consequence of the large kinematic variability of slope movements (slide, flow, fall, spreading), which are dynamic systems, complex in time and space and closely linked to both inherited and current preparatory and triggering controls.

To develop comprehensive hazard assessment procedures, it is therefore important to incorporate time series, 3-D patterns and deformation analyses in the model-building exercise; it is also essential that the physically-based models be improved so that a greater spatial and temporal description can be included. This goal requires first that rapid-varying factors (rainfall, freeze-thaw, meltwater, ground acceleration) and slow-varying factors (tectonic movements, weathering and associated property changes, erosion, deposition, changing confinement and . . . [Full Text of this Article]