Characteristics of loess landslides triggered by different factors in the Chinese Loess Plateau

Loess landslides are one of the most serious geological disasters in the Chinese Loess Plateau. Research has revealed that earthquake, rainfall, and human activities are common triggers for loess landslides. In order to study the relationship and characteristics of these landslides triggered by different factors, the paper uses historic landslide data to expound the basic motion indices of landslides triggered by different factors. More than half of loess landslides occurred on concave surface slopes, while nearly 40% of the loess landslides occurred on convex surface slopes. Human activities have a great effect on the occurrence of landslides, and the distribution density of landslides on residential land was almost five times that of bare land. Additionally, earthquake-induced loess landslides had the largest sliding volume, whereas the excavation-induced loess landslide had the smallest sliding volume. The sliding volume of irrigation-induced and rainfall-induced loess landslides were between earthquake-induced loess landslides and excavation-induced loess landslide. Many of loess landslides were induced by a combination of these factors, such as rainfall and excavation, irrigation and excavation. Then a model that described the impact of these factors on the loess landslides was proposed.