Rainfall erosivity in climate changes and the connection to landslide events

Abstract

Abstract Climate anomalies lead to changes in rainfall patterns in Indonesia. Climate change has an impact on the increase in seasonal rainfall in December, January, and February, significantly in most areas in Java, Sulawesi, and Eastern Indonesia. Changes in the pattern of rainfall in Indonesia, especially for the sloping area of South Sulawesi, have resulted in increasing intensity of landslides. The objective of this study was to determine changes in rainfall patterns and erosivity that occur in East Luwu District which have an impact on landslide events. Rainfall data used from 1979 to 2017, erosivity value (R-factor) with Lenvain equation, IDW interpolation aplication are used for resulting erosivity map. Data from land cover, geology and soil are used as supporting data in the assessment of landslide events. Changes in the rainfall pattern since 1998-2017, as a result of global climate change, have resulted in increasing rainfall ability to erode the soil. Rainfall erosivity increased by 22% in 1999-2008, and increased to 33% in 2009-2017, most of the study areas in the last 10 years (2007-2017) have erosivity values (R-factor) >200 with high landslides activitty. The high level of rainfall erosivity could be reflected to the high level of climate variability as climate change phenomenon.