Adrian GROZAVU¹, Mihai Ciprian MĂRGĂRINT¹ & Cristian Valeriu PATRICHE^1
1“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Geography Department, Romania, email: adriangrozavu@yahoo.com, margarint.ciprian@yahoo.com, email: pvcristi@yahoo.com

LANDSLIDE SUSCEPTIBILITY ASSESSMENT IN THE BRĂIEŞTI-SINEŞTI SECTOR OF IAŞI CUESTA

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In order to evaluate the landslide susceptibility in a sector of Iaşi Cuesta from the Moldavian Plateau, which constitutes one of the Romanian’s regions particularly susceptible to landslides, the logistic regression method was applied. The first stage consisted in the preparation of a landslide inventory by mapping their spatial distribution. Next, the construction of a GIS database including known factors controlling the landslide activity (slope angle, slope height, slope aspect, mean curvature, plan curvature, profile curvature, distance to drainage network, mean annual precipitations and land use), along with the statistical analysis of the data by using the logistic regression, led to the identification of the prevailing factors for the landslide occurrence in the region: terrain slope, land use and mean annual precipitations. Finally, a relevant landslide susceptibility map was achieved, showing that the terrains displaying high and very high susceptibility represent about 29% of the region’s area. Compared to landslide area (3082 ha), these terrains cover a significantly greater surface (5675 ha), resulting that 2593 ha from the landslide free area has a great potential for landsliding. The comparison with other regions with similar morphoclimatic conditions may constitute a validation of the obtained results.