Abstract:
Landslides are considered as the main cause for mass deterioration and distraction of
topographic features. It is an ongoing problem in every rainy season where the mass of soil is
detached from its original location and moves down the hills thereby causing loss of life and
public properties. Therefore, this study aimed to produce landslide hazard susceptibility map
based on certain environmental parameters like Elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, lithology,
soil texture, land use Land cover, distance to lineament, distance to drainage, distance to road
and rainfall by using Geospatial and Multicriteria Decision Analysis at Gechi district, Oromia
regional state, western Ethiopia. The weights of selected susceptibility factors were performed
using pair wise comparison matrix of analytical hierarchical process (AHP) method. The sum
total of all parameters was weighted using Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) to prepare the
Landslide Hazard Zonation (LHZ) map. In this study probability and non-probability sampling
techniques were employed to collect ground truth data which identifies about the existing
landslide and overlaid with the prepared landslide hazard zonation map for validation. The
study clearly reveals that about 18.4 km2
(1.3%) remains very high hazard zones; whereas about
299.6km2
(20.5%) was falls in very low hazard zone. Consequently, from the total number of 29
landslide inventory points 82.7% of past landslide events were falls in maximum landslide
hazard zone and only 17.3% of landslide events were falls in low hazard zone. So, this shows
satisfactory agreement the rationality of considered parameters, the adopted MCDA technique,
tools and procedures with the prepared landslide hazard zonation map. Therefore, it is
recommended that local governments must develop appropriate plans to reduce landslide effects
through land use and land cover policies and regulations.
