Active High-Locality Landslides in Mao County: Early Identification and Deformational Rules

High-locality landslides are located on slopes at high elevations and are characterized by long sliding distances, large gravitational potential energy, high movement velocities, tremendous kinetic energy, and sudden onset. Thus, they often cause catastrophic damage to human lives and engineering facilities. It is of great significance to identify active high-locality landslides in their early deformational stages and to reveal their deformational rules for effective disaster mitigation. Due to alpine-canyon landforms, Mao County is a representative source of high-locality landslides. This work employs multisource data (geological, terrain, meteorological, ground sensor, and remote sensing data) and time-series InSAR technology to recognize active high-locality landslides in Mao County and to reveal their laws of development. Some new viewpoints are suggested. (1) Nineteen active high-locality landslides are identified by the time-series InSAR technique, of which 7 are newly discovered in this work. All these high-locality landslides possessed good concealment during their early deformational stages. The newly discovered HL-16 landslide featured a large scale and a great slope height, posing a large threat to the surrounding buildings and residents. (2) The high-locality landslides in Mao County were mainly triggered by three factors: earthquakes, precipitation, and road construction. (3) Three typical high-locality landslides that were triggered by different factors are highlighted with their deformational rules under the functions of steep terrain, shattered rocks, fissure-water penetration, precipitation, and road construction. This work may provide clues to the prevention and control of high-locality landslides and can be applied to the determination of active high-locality landslides in other hard-hit areas.