Defining the geological units susceptible to landslides in Pannonian Croatia using energy relief index

Abstract

Climate change is anticipated to have predominantly negative impacts on human habitats in the coming decades, leading to significant environmental transformations, including an increase in landslide frequency. This paper introduces a novel approach to evaluating the susceptibility of geological units (GUs) to landslides, based on an analysis of the energy relief index. The method is applied to Pannonian Croatia, specifically the North Croatian Basin and the Hrvatsko Zagorje Basin, where landslides are the predominant mass movement process. Previous attempts to create landslide susceptibility maps for Croatia did not adequately analyze landslide inventories. Our approach utilizes three key datasets: landslide inventory, geological maps, and relief energy, to clearly identify which GUs are most frequently in an unstable equilibrium state. The findings highlight that the youngest isolated Miocene unit (M₇) has the highest landslide susceptibility. This method shows significant promise by enabling precise identification of landslide-prone GUs and offering the potential for integration into the production of small-scale landslide susceptibility maps, particularly for determining weighting factors for GUs within specific study areas. However, it is crucial to ensure that the landslide inventory accurately represents the entire landslide population in the study area.