In this study, a comparative analysis of the statistical index (SI), index of entropy (IOE) and weights of evidence (WOE) models was introduced to landslide susceptibility mapping, and the performance of the three models was validated and systematically compared. As one of the most landslide-prone areas in Shaanxi Province, China, Shangnan County was selected as the study area. Firstly, a series of reports, remote sensing images and geological maps were collected, and field surveys were carried out to prepare a landslide inventory map. A total of 348 landslides were identified in study area, and they were reclassified as a training dataset (70% = 244 landslides) and testing dataset (30% = 104 landslides) by random selection. Thirteen conditioning factors were then employed. Corresponding thematic data layers and landslide susceptibility maps were generated based on ArcGIS software. Finally, the area under the curve (AUC) values were calculated for the training dataset and the testing dataset in order to validate and compare the performance of the three models. For the training dataset, the AUC plots showed that the WOE model had the highest accuracy rate of 76.05%, followed by the SI model (74.67%) and the IOE model (71.12%). In the case of the testing dataset, the prediction accuracy rates for the SI, IOE and WOE models were 73.75%, 63.89%, and 75.10%, respectively. It can be concluded that the WOE model had the best prediction capacity for landslide susceptibility mapping in Shangnan County. The landslide susceptibility map produced by the WOE model had a profound geological and engineering significance in terms of landslide hazard prevention and control in the study area and other similar areas.

Landslides pose significant and serious geological threat disasters worldwide, threatening human lives and property; China is particularly susceptible to these disasters. This paper focuses on Pengyang County, which is situated in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China, an area prone to landslides. This study investigated the application of machine learning techniques for analyzing landslide susceptibility. To construct and validate the model, we initially compiled a landslide inventory comprising 972 historical landslides and an equivalent number of non-landslide sites (Data sourced from the Pengyang County Department of Natural Resources). To ensure an impartial evaluation, both the landslide and non-landslide datasets were randomly divided into two sets using a 70/30 ratio. Next, we extracted 15 landslide conditioning factors, including the slope angle, elevation, profile curvature, plan curvature, slope aspect, TWI (topographic wetness index), TPI (topographic position index), distance to roads and rivers, NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index), rainfall, land use, lithology, SPI (stream power index), and STI (sediment transport index), from the spatial database. Subsequently, a correlation analysis between the conditioning factors and landslide occurrences was conducted using the certainty factor (CF) method. Three landslide models were established by employing logistic regression (LR), functional trees (FTs), and random subspace functional trees (RSFTs) algorithms. The landslide susceptibility map was categorized into five levels: very low, low, medium, high, and very high susceptibility. Finally, the predictive capability of the three algorithms was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The better the prediction, the higher the AUC value. The results indicate that all three models are predictive and practical, with only minor discrepancies in accuracy. The integrated model (RSFT) displayed the highest predictive performance, achieving an AUC value of 0.844 for the training dataset and 0.837 for the validation dataset. This was followed by the LR model (0.811 for the training dataset and 0.814 for the validation dataset) and the FT model (0.776 for the training dataset and 0.760 for the validation dataset). The proposed methods and resulting landslide susceptibility map can assist researchers and local authorities in making informed decisions for future geohazard prevention and mitigation. Furthermore, they will prove valuable and be useful for other regions with similar geological characteristics features.

Landslide deposits often exhibit surface features, such as transverse ridges and X-shaped conjugate troughs, whose physical formation origins are not well understood. To study the deposit morphology, laboratory studies typically focus on the simplest landslide geometry: an inclined plane accelerating the sliding mass immediately followed by its deceleration on a horizontal plane. However, existing experiments have been conducted only for a limited range of the slope angle θ. Here, we study the effect of θ on the kinematics and deposit morphology of laboratory landslides along a low-friction base, measured using an advanced 3D scanner. At low θ (30°–35°), we find transverse ridges formed by overthrusting on the landslide deposits. At moderate θ (40°–55°), conjugate troughs form. A Mohr–Coulomb failure model predicts the angle enclosed by the X-shaped troughs as 90° − φ, with φ the internal friction angle, in agreement with our experiments and a natural landslide. This supports the speculation that conjugate troughs form due to failure associated with a triaxial shear stress. At high θ (60°–85°), a double-upheaval morphology forms because the rear of the sliding mass impacts the front during the transition from the slope to the horizontal plane. The overall surface area of the landslides increases during their downslope motion and then decreases during their runout.