Landslide is one of the most dangerous geological hazards in mountainous regions, which causes large casualties. Fast and accurate location of a landslide is critical to disaster mitigation and early warning of secondary hazards. The landslide location is a difficult problem in a remote region with sparse seismic network due to low resolution of the velocity structure model. Green's functions from ambient seismic noises can be used to calibrate effects due to the uncertainty of velocity structure.
A research team led by Prof. CHU Risheng at College of Earth and Planetary Sciences of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences relocated a large landslide occurred in Nuugaatsiaq, Greenland, on 17 June 2017 using relative location method based on Green's functions from ambient seismic noises. The location result of the landslide is about 2.5 km away from the site given by satellite image. This is better than the result based on traditional location method, which has a deviation up to ~17 km. The result demonstrates that this algorithm can provide accurate location of landslide with seismographic stations in global and regional networks, thus providing timely assistance to early warning of secondary hazards.
The study was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth in April.
