UAV Application for Short-Time Evolution Detection of the Vomice Landslide (South Italy)

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibility to detect the short-time evolution of the slow-moving Vomice earth flow, located in the northeastern sector of the Calabria region (South Italy), by combining the information obtained from two different drone flights, carried out in February 2019 and June 2022, with field surveys. The obtained results consisted of delimiting all landslide bodies constituting the Vomice earth flow, detecting landslide types and the state of activity, as well as identifying spatial and volumetric changes. The obtained results showed that depletion and transition zones of the Vomice earth flow are active, while the accumulation zone appears prevalently dormant. Particularly, in the analyzed period, the depletion zone was characterized by local collapses of the main scarps where several slides evolving in earth flows caused more than 20 m of retrogressive fail upslope. The maximum elevation changes observed in these zones were about ±5 m. The volume of the material mobilized by mass movements was about 114.2 × 103 m3, whereas the volume of the accumulated material was approximately 92.7 × 103 m3. The transition zone was affected by several slow earthflows that re-mobilized the displaced material located in the middle portion of the landslide and reached the accumulation zone. Overall, the results of this study demonstrated the practicality and feasibility of using UAV tools for detecting the short-time evolution of a large landslide.