A Review of Rainfall Thresholds for Landslide Occurrence in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64862/Keywords:
Landslide, Rainfall, Thresholds, Validation, Early warning system, Hindu Kush HimalayaAbstract
The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region is globally recognized as one of the most landslide-prone areas due to its steep terrain, fragile geological formations, complex and uneven geology, and highly variable precipitation patterns. The study of rainfall thresholds is vital in this region to understand the factors that trigger landslides and their role in early warning systems. At first, bibliometric analysis was performed using the Scopus database within article titles, abstracts, and keywords to find articles that contained the set of words “Landslide,” “Rainfall,” and “Threshold” along with country names of the HKH region (i.e., Nepal, India, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar). The new set of keywords from cluster analysis was used again in Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science to find articles for the systematic review. A total of 54 papers were identified where rainfall thresholds were defined, and for each paper, data such as publication details, details of data used for threshold definition, threshold types, methods of threshold definition, validation techniques, and their implementation for early warning systems were collected. There was a significant increase in research papers on this theme over the last three years, and the majority focused on India and China. The results indicate statistical methods are heavily used to define thresholds rather than physically-based models. Several advances have been seen in recently published articles in terms of methodology used and quality of the data used. Nevertheless, drawbacks can be found in several categories such as clear explanation of methodology used, proper mention of the sources of data used and the period of analysis. Lack of validation of the proposed model seems to be the most severe concern. Even though several papers state that development of an early warning system is the major reason for defining thresholds, the early warning system or its prototype is rarely developed.
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