Quantifying the Stabilizing Effect of Forests on Shallow Landslide-Prone Slopes

Shallow landslides are natural hazards that can affect human life and infrastructure both directly and indirectly. Such landslides usually involve low-cohesion soil mantles less than a few meters deep. As shown by evidence worldwide, the presence of forests can lead to increased slope stability, due to mechanical and hydrological mechanisms, and therefore significantly reduce the landslide risk in many locations. Therefore, the nationwide project SilvaProtect-CH, which provided data and defined uniform criteria for protection forest delimitation in Switzerland, has also included shallow landslide protection forests. According to the modelling results of SilvaProtect-CH, approximately 27 % of the Swiss protection forests provide a protective function against shallow landslides. To facilitate a quick quantitative evaluation of the slope stabilizing effect of such forests, we developed the tool SlideforNET, which is described in this chapter.