# Deep critical zone controls on shallow landslides

## TL;DR

This paper shows how deep underground rock structures influence where and when shallow landslides occur, improving predictions of landslide patterns.

## Contribution

A new coupled hydrologic and slope stability model demonstrates how deep critical zone structures control shallow landslide locations and timing.

## Key findings

- Deep conductive bedrock reduces destabilizing pore pressures in soil, limiting landslide likelihood.
- Absence of conductive bedrock leads to widespread soil saturation and larger, earlier landslides during storms.
- Landslide patterns can be used to infer subsurface critical zone structure variations.

## Abstract

Shallow landslides typically involving only the soil mantle constitute both a primary process driving landscape evolution and a substantial geologic hazard. Theory and empirical documentation of shallow landslides generally assume that the elevated pore pressures that destabilize soils arise from runoff only within the soil. In many landscapes, however, it has been recognized that groundwater emerging from underlying weathered bedrock can generate destabilizing pore pressures. Here, we develop a coupled hydrologic and slope stability model that explicitly explores how a conductive bedrock weathering zone guides storm runoff and localizes shallow landslides across a watershed. The distinctiveness of the location, size, and timing of predicted landslides suggests that the influence of subsurface structure may be estimated from landslide mapping patterns.

The deep critical zone (CZ) has long been recognized for its importance in influencing shallow landslides but was not considered feasible to include in slope stability models at the watershed scale. Here, we demonstrate that simple approximations of the CZ in a fully coupled hydrologic and soil slope stability model can effectively capture the location, timing, and likely size of shallow landslides. To achieve this, we use coupled, process-based models that incorporate the effects of 1) deep CZ structures, 2) three-dimensional transient hydrology, and 3) multidimensional slope stability, calibrated with data from an intensively monitored field site. Our results show that the hydrologically active deep CZ guides groundwater flow, influencing where it drains from or exfiltrates to the soil mantle and producing distinct patterns of soil saturation and seepage forces at the soil–bedrock boundary. A deep conductive, weathered bedrock drains the soil mantle, reducing the likelihood of destabilizing pore pressures, while the downslope thinning of the CZ forces groundwater to the surface. This pattern creates localized instability and a tendency for similar-sized landslides across the landscape. In contrast, the absence of conductive weathered bedrock results in more widespread destabilizing pore pressures, leading to larger landslides and the likelihood of landslides earlier in a storm than in landscapes underlain by a deep CZ. Our findings suggest that first-order variations of deep CZs can provide physical explanations for variations observed in the susceptibility, magnitude, and timing of shallow landslides, and that CZ structure may be inferred from patterns and timing of landsliding.