Susceptibility assessment of earthquake-triggered landslides in El Salvador using logistic regression

This work has evaluated the probability of earthquake-triggered landslide occurrence in the whole of El Salvador, with a Geographic Information System (GIS) and a logistic regression model. Slope gradient, elevation, aspect, mean annual precipitation, lithology, land use, and terrain roughness are the predictor variables used to deter-mine the dependent variable of occurrence or non-occurrence of landslides within an individual grid cell. The results illustrate the importance of terrain roughness and soil type as key factors within the model - using only these two variables the analysis returned a significance level of 89.4%. The results obtained from the model within the GIS were then used to produce a map of relative landslide susceptibility. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.