Zoning of the susceptibility to landslides in the Cordillera de Guaniguanico, Cuba. A contribution to the ordering of the territory

Abstract

This research is aimed at identifying the landslides susceptibility zoning in Cordillera de Guaniguanico. The obtained susceptibility mapping supports land use planning for the study area. A landslide inventory was compiled from visual image interpretation and field work studies. The inventory allowed to establish the correlation between the landslides and the different causal factors, which facilitated the weighting of the different variables controlling these movements in the area. Different methods of GIS susceptibility modeling, such as Indexed overlay, Boolean logic, Hierarchical analytical process (AHP), Fuzzy logic, and Bivariate statistical analysis (BSA) are applied in the study. It was revealed that approximately 25% of the Cordillera de Guaniguanico is susceptible to landslides occurrence, of which almost 10% have high susceptibility. The results validation showed that the high susceptibility classes occupy a relatively small area (<20%), while revealing a high percentage of the landslides inventoried. On the other hand, the Fuzzy logic and AHP modeling methods provide the best results considering the percent accuracy estimates.