Landslides as proxies of climate change: evidence from past activity records in the Dolomites (Italy)

This study concerns the relationships between landslides and climate changes during the Late Quaternary. The research has been carried out in test areas located in the Dolomites (Italy), following the basic idea that modifications in landslide frequency may be interpreted as changes in the hydrological conditions of the slopes, which are in turn controlled by climate. By analysing the data set available, four periods of enhanced landsliding have been outlined. These four periods have been compared with different Late Glacial and Holocene paleoclimatic records, in order to check the correspondence between temporal concentrations of landslide events and climatic events. The results suggest that landslide activity could have been climatically-driven and that a positive moisture balance could have played a major role in conditioning slope instability at the hundred to thousand years time scale.