Thermohydraulic Numerical Modeling of Slope-Vegetation-Atmosphere Interaction: Case Study of the Pyroclastic Slope Cover at Monte Faito, Italy

Flow-like landslides are recognized to be the most destructive slope movements and to threaten human life. They may occur in several geological settings, as is the case of the pyroclastic soil covers resting on either igneous, or carbonate, bedrocks. The pyroclastic soil strata involved in these shallow landslides typically are partially saturated over the whole year. Intense rainfall, considered at hourly time scale, represents the triggering factor because it causes the decrease in matric suction and the consequent decrease in soil shear strength. However, it is recognized as the role of the hydromechanical slope behavior, the vegetation cover, and the geomorphological irregularities on shallow landslide hazard. These factors should be properly simulated in physically based predictive models of the failure onset to set up a reliable early warning system (EWS). This paper presents a new coupled thermohydraulic modeling of a pyroclastic soil cover in Campania, accounting for several slope factors that may predispose landslide activation, including the geomorphological local irregularities. The Mount Faito test site, in the Lattari Mountains (Southern Italy), has been adopted as a prototype slope for the geomorphological and hydromechanical scenarios of reference because of the extensive field and laboratory characterizations of the soil strata already available from previous studies. Once validated with these data, the numerical model has been used to estimate the slope response to critical rainfall scenarios. Such numerical estimations have been then compared to the instability predictions currently provided by empirical approaches, defined in terms of the intensity and duration of rainstorms threshold of shallow landslide activations. By comparison between the empirical and physically based approaches, the crucial role of antecedent slope hydraulic conditions and the geological setting for implementing reliable EWS, reducing false alarms, is proved.