Hillshaded digital elevation models are a well-known information layer used to determine the geomorphological properties of landslides. However, their use is limited because the results are dependent on a particular sun azimuth and elevation. Approaches proposed to overcome this bias include positive openness, sky-view factor, red relief image maps, and prismatic openness. We propose an upgrade to all these methods, a method named Visualization for Archaeological Topography (VAT). The method is based on a fusion of four information layers into a single image (hillshaded terrain, slope, positive openness, and sky-view factor). VAT can be used to enhance visibility of features of varied scale, height, orientation, and form that sit on terrain ranging from extremely flat to very steep. Besides this, the merits of VAT are that the results are comparable across diverse geographical areas. We have successfully tested the method for landslide recognition and analysis in five different areas in the Vipava Valley (SW Slovenia). Geomorphology of the area is very diverse and holds various types of mass movements. In contrast to classical hillshaded digital elevation models (DEMs), the geomorphological features of landslides obtained by the VAT method are very clearly seen in all studied mass movements.

The Slovenian Basin is a Mesozoic deep-water paleogeographic unit, located along the border between the eastern Southern Alps and the Dinarides, that records geodynamic signals from the opening of both the Piedmont-Liguria and the Neotethys oceanic domains. In the Middle Jurassic, it was bordered by the Dinaric (Adriatic) Carbonate Platform to the south and the Julian High submarine plateau to the north. The southern margin of the basin is characterized by a several tens of meters thick sedimentary sequence of Bajocian-Bathonian (Callovian?) age that is dominated by limestone megabreccia shed from the Dinaric Carbonate Platform, sedimented by debris-flows in a toe-of-slope sedimentary environment. It is accompanied by rud/grain/packstone beds sedimented via (high-density) turbidity-flows. This megabreccia unit represents the proximal equivalent of the lower resedimented limestones of the Tolmin Formation. The matrix within lithoclasts indicates resedimentation from ooidal shoals and the erosion of basinal and slope sediments. Lithoclasts are of Norian to Lower Jurassic age, and originated from (A) platform margin carbonates, i.e. Triassic marginal reef and Lower Jurassic sand-shoal limestones, (B) deep open-shelf or slope coarse bioclastic limestones, and (C) older basinal rocks. The lithoclast analysis enables the reconstruction of the platform-basin transitional zone that is not preserved (exposed) due to overthrusting. The limestone megabreccia indicates enhanced tectonic activity causing repeated collapse of the platform margin, probably connected to the initiation of intraoceanic subduction within Neotethys followed by ophiolite obduction onto the eastern distal margin of the Adria.