Landscape change and landslide inventories from the 2015 Mw6.5 Lefkada Earthquake, Greece, in Post-earthquake topography and landslide inventory from the 2015 Lefkada Mw6.5 earthquake, Greece

Clark, M.K., Zekkos, D. & Manousakis, J. Enabling 3D landslide event statistics using satellite and UAV-enabled topographic differencing. Landslides 22, 1041–1058 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-024-02374-x

This mission documents landscape change caused by the 2015 Mw6.5 Lefkada earthquake in western Greece. To capture perishable data in the aftermath, we combined satellite and UAV remote sensing with field surveys to map earthquake-triggered landslides and quantify topographic change.

High-resolution WorldView-3 stereo imagery was processed with the SETSM algorithm to generate digital surface models (DSMs), while UAV optical imagery was processed with Structure-from-Motion (SfM) to create local DEMs. DEM differencing between pre- and post-event surfaces revealed elevation change and enabled mapping of ~700 landslides, producing a novel three-dimensional landslide volume inventory. Results show that topographic differencing provides clearer identification of source areas than imagery alone, distinguishes deep failures from shallow ravel, and captures complex patterns not represented by simple slip-surface models.

Data products include WorldView-3 DEMs, UAV-derived DEMs, DEM difference rasters, a polygon inventory of landslides, and supporting peak ground acceleration (PGA) grids. These openly available datasets can be reused to inform hazard and risk assessments, evaluate landslide initiation and runout dynamics, improve change-detection methods, and provide baselines for future studies of earthquake-driven geomorphic processes and coastal retreat.