Effects of plant roots on soil shear strength and shallow landslide proneness in an area of northern Italian Apennines
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Effects of plant roots on soil shear strength and shallow landslide proneness in an area of northern Italian Apennines M. Bordoni 1 & A. Cislaghi 2 & A. Vercesi 3 & G. B. Bischetti 2 & C. Meisina 1 Received: 7 October 2019 / Accepted: 20 March 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In areas with similar soil properties and geomorphological conditions, different land uses could promote or reduce the failure probability towards shallow landslides, especially due to differences in the reinforcement acted in the soil by plant roots. In this paper, root density, mechanical properties, and reinforcement provided by different land use types (sowed grasses used to produce animal feed, vineyards cultivated with different agronomical management practices, shrublands, woodlands of broadleaved species) of a representative area of northern Italian Apennines (Oltrepò Pavese hilly sector) were quantified and inserted into a slope stability model to estimate the effects of different land uses on shallow landslide failure probability. Root reinforcement is correlated proportionally to root density in soil and root mechanical properties. Furthermore, a greater root reinforcement in the soil guarantees a lower failure probability of a slope. Sowed grasses and shrublands in abandoned areas are the most land uses which are more prone to shallow landsliding, followed by vineyards with tilled inter-rows. Vineyards with permanent grass cover or alternation in the inter-rows and woodlands promote the stability of slopes in a wide range of steepness (> 21–25° for vineyards with permanent grass cover in the inter-rows, 28–33° for vineyards with alternation in the inter-rows and woodlands). According to these results, possible land use managements acting as mitigation measures for shallow landslides could be implemented. Keywords Land use . Root reinforcement . Shallow landslides . Slope stability . Monte Carlo method
Introduction The Italian Apennines are an orogenic chain developed across the entire Italian Peninsula, characterized by gentle or steep hillslopes and by mountains reaching about 3000 m above sea level (a.s.l.; Cavinato and De Celles 1999). Their geological and geomorphological structure determines a proneness of this territory towards slope instabilities, in particular, to fastmoving shallow landslides triggered by intense rainfalls. This is documented by several triggering events occurred in the last years in sectors or catchments across all the Italian Apeninnes: in Lombardy (Bordoni et al. 2015), in Liguria (Cevasco et al. * M. Bordoni [email protected] 1
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy
2
Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Milan, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, Italy
3
Department of Sustainable Crop Production, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia Parmense 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
2014; Bartelletti et al. 2017), in Tuscany (Giannecchini et a
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