GIS and AHP-Based Landslide Susceptibility Mapping of the Teesta River Basin, Eastern Darjeeling-Kalimpong Himalaya, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66132/ngce20260205Keywords:
Landslide, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Hazard Mapping, Geographic Information System (GIS), Teesta River BasinAbstract
Landslides are among the most recurrent hydro-geomorphic hazards in the Eastern Himalaya, where steep terrain, weak lithology, intense monsoonal rainfall, high drainage dissection and increasing anthropogenic pressure collectively reduce slope stability. This study prepared a landslide susceptibility map for a part of the Teesta River Basin covering Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts, West Bengal, India, using Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Seventeen landslide-conditioning factors were incorporated: altitude, slope, aspect, curvature, relative relief, lineament density, distance from lineament, land use/land cover, soil, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, lithology, geomorphology, drainage density, rainfall, Topographic Wetness Index, distance from drainage and Stream Power Index. Thematic layers were derived from DEM, satellite data, geological and soil information, rainfall data and ancillary spatial datasets, standardized in a GIS environment and integrated through weighted overlay analysis. The resulting susceptibility map classified the basin into very low, low, moderate, high and very high susceptibility zones. Moderate susceptibility occupied the largest area (69.85 km²), followed by high susceptibility (68.74 km²), low susceptibility (48.94 km²), very high susceptibility (37.87 km²) and very low susceptibility (19.48 km²). The northern and central mountainous sectors, especially around Kalimpong and Kalimpong-I, were more susceptible than the southern foothill areas. The map provides a spatially explicit decision-support layer for land-use planning, infrastructure alignment, disaster risk reduction and sustainable watershed management in the Teesta Himalayan landscape.
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Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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