Simulated or measured soil moisture: which one is adding more value to regional landslide early warning?

Wicki, Adrian; Jansson, Per-Erik; Lehmann, Peter; Hauck, Christian; Stähli, Manfred

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4585-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4585-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4585-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 8

Research article

|

26 Aug 2021

Research article |

| 26 Aug 2021

Simulated or measured soil moisture: which one is adding more value to regional landslide early warning?

Adrian Wicki, Per-Erik Jansson, Peter Lehmann, Christian Hauck, and Manfred Stähli

Data sets

Rietholzbach catchment data M. Hirschi, D. Michel, I. Lehner, and S. I. Seneviratne https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000282395

Short summary

Soil moisture information was shown to be valuable for landslide prediction. Soil moisture was simulated at 133 sites in Switzerland, and the temporal variability was compared to the regional occurrence of landslides. We found that simulated soil moisture is a good predictor for landslides, and that the forecast goodness is similar to using in situ measurements. This encourages the use of models for complementing existing soil moisture monitoring networks for regional landslide early warning.