FINDING THE MOST SUITABLE SLOPE STABILITY MODEL FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON A LANDSLIDE IN SOUTHEAST FRANCE

The responseof a landslidenearBarcelonnette (southeastFrance) to climatic factorswas simulatedwith three slope stability models: a fully empirical gross precipitation threshold, a semi-empirical threshold model for net precipitation, and a fully conceptual slope stability model. The three models performed with similar levels in reproducing the present-day temporal pattern of landslide reactivation, using dendrogeomorphological information as test data. The semi-empirical and conceptualmodelswere found tobeoverparameterized, becausemore thanoneparameter settingmatching the test datawas identified. In the caseof the conceptualmodel, this resulted in stronglydivergent scenarios of future landslide activity, using downscaled climate scenarios as inputs to the model. The uncertainty of the landslide scenarios obtained with the semi-empiricalmodelwasmuch lower. In addition, the simulation of strongly different scenarios by the fully empirical threshold was attributed to its incomplete representation of the site-specific landslide reactivationmechanism. It is concluded that the semi-empiricalmodel constitutes thebest compromisebetweenconceptual representationandmodel robustness.Copyrigh