Funds are provided to quantify spatial and temporal variations in landslide sediment production in the Waipaoa River Basin, New Zealand using a variety of remote sensing techniques (InSAR, airborne LiDAR, historic air photos) in combination with cosmogenic radionuclides (10Be). The Waipaoa Basin is one of the MARGINS Source-to-Sink study sites, and this work will contribute to an overall understanding of sediment generation and mobilization in landslide-prone areas. The PIs will: 1) estimate the spatial distribution of slope failure on seasonal timescales since the early ?90?s, 2) track downslope movement of natural and anthropogenic features and generate maps, 3) document case studies of landslide-prone hillslopes and their coupling to channel networks, and 4) study the difference in landslide activity upstream and downstream of knickpoints, and the relation to long-term climate evolution and land use change.
Broader impacts include international collaboration with local (New Zealand) scientists, generation and rapid dissemination of a state-of-the-art data set to the MARGINS community, graduate student training, and local land-use relevance.
