Victorian Resources Online (archived)
Land characteristics and management factors involved in landslides
Processes involved:
Landsliding occurs when the shear forces exceed soil/regolith strength; this generally occurs when soil/regolith strength is reduced by an increase in water.
Processes involved are:
- infiltration ofwater
- wetting of basal plane
- saturation of soil (mudflow)
- shearing and movement of soil mass by gravity
- loading of soil mass resulting in an increase in shear strength
- removal of material from slope toe resulting in reduced slope support
- rock and earth slides
- earth flow (downslope movement of unsaturated soil and weathered rock on a lubricated basal shear plane)
- mudflow (movement of saturated soil and rock)
- combination slide/flows
Land characteristics affecting processes | Factors affected by land characteristics | Management factors that modify land characteristics | |
| Vegetation | - leaf area, rooting depth perenniality - total leaf area and canopy type - root depth and mass |
| All aspects of the vegetation are affected by selection of species and control of biomass by practices such as cultivating clearing trafficking fertilising grazing trampling burning |
| Climate | - seasonal rainfall/evapotranspiration regime |
| |
| Geology | - perviousness of rock or unconsolidated sediments - wet strength of rock/regolith - angle of dip |
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| Topography | - slope degree - microrelief and position in landscape |
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| Soil | - topsoil permeability - presence of slowly permeable layer - cohesion of particles/aggregates including tendency to slake and disperse - depth - clay mineralogy |
| Compaction and soil disruption by stock and vehicles, and by cultivating, will affect profile permeability |
