Abstract:
Nanjiang County is located in the red bed regions of the mountainous and hilly region of eastern Sichuan Province, where rainfall-induced landslides frequently occur during the rainy season. This study constructed a database of 82 landslide events from 2016 to 2021. Using rainfall data from the gauges closest to each landslide, four key variables were calculated: cumulative rainfall amount (
E), rainfall duration (
D), average rainfall intensity (
I), and antecedent cumulative rainfall amount (
A). To analyze the influence of current rainfall, scatter plots of
I-
D (intensity-duration),
E-
D (cumulative rainfall-duration), and
E-
I (cumulative rainfall-intensity) were generated. For the combined effect of antecedent rainfall (preceding a given period) and current rainfall, scatter plots for
E-
A5,
E-
A10, and
E-
A15 were established. Based on the area clustering method, a four-level early warning model was proposed for the region, and its thresholds were validated using both historical rainfall-induced mass landslide events and recent monitoring data. The results indicate that: (1) landslides in the study area are strongly correlated with the peak rainfall intensity of the day (
R), the same day cumulative rainfall (
E), and the cumulative rainfall from previous periods (
A); (2) threshold models such as lg
I-lg
D, lg
E-lg
I,
E-
A5,
E-
A10, and
E-
A15 exhibit good classification performance and are suitable for graded early warning applications. These findings provide empirical support for the development of rainfall-induced landslide early warning systems in red bed mountainous areas of Sichuan Province.