New Insights into the Spatiotemporal Precursory Failure Dynamics of the 2017 Xinmo Landslide and Its Surrounds

Abstract

Sentinel-1 data on the kinematics of the 2017 Xinmo landslide and its surrounds are studied to understand the precursory failure dynamics of a large region with a historical predisposition to landslides. We perform a systematic spatiotemporal analysis over a period of two years to identify high-risk regions and discriminate between their precursory failure dynamics. We found the 2017 Xinmo landslide source to exhibit a unique kinematic signature which can be distinguished, almost a year in advance, from those of other sites of instabilities. Findings pave the way for the development of a new framework that exploits these differences in the dynamics of motions to accurately predict the locati..