RS-GIS based morphometrical and geological multi-criteria approach to the landslide susceptibility mapping in Gish River Basin,West Bengal,India

Darjeeling Himalaya is one of the several mountainous areas of India which is often suffered from landslide hazards. In this paper, a multi criteria evaluation is applied using 16 morphometric indicators, geology and lineaments to identify the areas vulnerable in respect to drainage and relief conditions. As both drainage and relief parameters exert strong influences on landslide intensity, both the diversity maps are integrated for final landslide susceptibility mapping. The obtained results show that 20.17?sq.?km (7.61%) area within the basin is highly susceptible for landslides, where average drainage density is 3.78?km/sq.?km, relative relief is greater than 408?m and slope is greater than 12°. The validation result shows that very high landslide susceptible zone is associated with very high frequency of landslide occurrence. Beside this, ROC curve also suggests good predicted rate (86.60%) for the model. So, the proposed method can be applied for predicting landslide susceptible zone.