Geometric and kinematic features of a landslide in Mabian Sichuan, China, derived from UAV photography

This paper presents the geometric and kinematic features of a landslide in Mabian, Sichuan, China, which occurred on 5 May 2018, derived from data of UAV photography. In combination with a field investigation, the UAV data permits to delineate the source area, overlap area, and accumulation area of this landslide. Coupled with DEM, its total source and accumulation volumes are estimated and the motion process is analyzed using the video record. The results show that Mabian landslide is a planar rocky downslope movement with a total horizontal projection area of 24,871m(2), source volume of 13,750m(3), accumulation volume of 213,200m(3), and the expansion rate of 55%. The sliding video demonstrates that the movement duration of the landsliding is about 16s with a mean velocity 15.3m/s, and the maximum velocity is 22.8m/s. This study shows that the UAV-based aerial photography technology allow us to well characterize landslides rapidly in a quantitative manner.