Landslides Kosñipata Valley, Peru (Clark et al. 2016)

Please cite: Clark, K. E., West, A. J., Hilton, R. G., Asner, G. P., Quesada, C. A., Silman, M. R., Saatchi, S. S., Farfan Rios, W., Martin, R. E., Horwath, A. B., Halladay, K., New, M., and Malhi, Y. (2016), Storm-triggered landslides in the Peruvian Andes and implications for topography, carbon cycles, and biodiversity, Earth Surface Dynamics, 4, 47-70, doi: 10.5194/esurf-4-47-2016.

Landslides within the Kosñipata Valley in Peru were manually mapped over a 25-year period from 1988 to 2012 using Landsat 5 (Landsat Thematic Mapper) and Landsat 7 (Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) satellite images. The landslide inventory was produced by manually mapping landslide scars and their deposits in ArcGIS and by verifying via ground truthing of scars in the field. Mapping involved visually comparing images from one year to the next, specifically evaluating contrasting colour changes that suggest a landslide had occurred. The landslide areas visible via spectral contrast in the Landsat images include regions of failure, run-out areas, and deposits. Pan-sharpened high-resolution Quickbird and Worldview images were used to define the landslide boundaries.

Topographic shadow produced by hillslopes covered a minimum of 21% of the study area (35 km2 out of 185 km2), predominantly on southwest-facing slopes was consistently present between images. Landslides that fell within these shadow areas were not visible. Any landslides that were partially mapped underneath the Landsat topographic shadow were removed (see Figure 2a in Clark et al. 2016).

This product was created by Kathryn Clark ([e-mail]).

Other spatial datasets from Clark et al. (2016):
Clark, K., J. West, R. Hilton (2017). Landsat topographic shadow, Kosñipata Valley, Peru (Clark et al. 2016), HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/bdb9c4b4788d4141845947c81e5cceba
Clark, K., J. West, R. Hilton (2017). Region of landslide mapping, Kosñipata Valley, Peru (Clark et al. 2016), HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/c08742b733274f7dbf75891a7c185626
Clark, K., J. West, R. Hilton (2017). Landslide rates and hillslope turnover, Kosñipata Valley, Peru (Clark et al. 2016), HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/147e9ebecde442ed97738de7f404c057