Terraced Landscapes as NBSs for Geo-Hydrological Hazard Mitigation: Towards a Methodology for Debris and Soil Volume Estimations through a LiDAR Survey

Terraced landscapes are widely applied in many mountainous regions around the world as a result of the necessity to practice subsistence agriculture. Hence, they can be regarded as one of the most diffused anthropogenic modifications of the Earth’s surface. Different techniques have been used for their implementation leading to the artificial immobilization of debris and soil along the slopes whose surface is interrupted by a sequence of sub-horizontal and sub-vertical areas often using stone walls. In some areas of the world, such interventions are thousands of years old and their resistance to the degradation caused by the morphogenetic system can be attributed to the permeability of the stone walls as well as to their regular maintenance. In some other areas, the lack of maintenance has been the main cause for degradation processes ending with their collapse. The effects of climate change manifested through higher intensities and higher frequencies of rainfall are likely to accelerate the degradation process further by causing terraces to act as a source of debris or hyperconcentrated flow. This will in turn increase the severity of geo-hydrological hazards. The measures concerning reduction of geo-hydrological hazards are sought through identification of abandoned terraces and assessment of the potential for their sudden collapse. The present paper describes a framework for identification of abandoned terraces and estimation of the potential volume of shallow landslides that can be generated. The research conducted aims to advance the existing hazard assessment practices by combining numerical modeling with processing of high-resolution LiDAR data. A new algorithm is developed to support localization of terraces. The catchment scale approach applied to eight smaller catchments enables estimation of the total volume of soil and debris trapped along the slopes. It also generated some important quantitative data which will be used in the future risk assessment work. The work has been carried out within the EU-funded H2020 project RECONECT.