Author(s)

Irum Rahim^*, Syeda Maria Ali, Maria Aslam

Department of Environmental Science, Female Campus, Faculty of Basic and Applied Sciences, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

District Ghizer is a rugged mountainous territory which experiences several landslides each year. There are 16 major landslide areas and 53 villages that are at high risk to hazards. Keeping in view the severity of natural hazards, the present study was designed to generate landslide susceptibility map based on twelve causative factors viz., slope, aspect, elevation, drainage network, Stream Power Index (SPI), Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), lithological units, fault lines, rainfall, road network, land cover and soil texture. Soil texture was determined by particle size analysis and data for other factors were acquired from freely available sources. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed to identify major landslide causative factors in the district Ghizer. Further, a temporal assessment from 1999 till 2015 was generated to assess the impact of land cover change on landslides. It indicated that the barren soil/ exposed rocks and glaciers have reduced while the vegetation and water classes have shown increment. The total area that lies in moderate to very high landslide susceptible zones was 74.38%, while slope is the main landslide causative factor in the district Ghizer. Validation of the susceptibility map showed 88.1% of the landslides in the study area had occurred in the moderate to very high susceptible zones.

Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (LSM), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Geographic Information System (GIS), Weighted Linear Combination (WLC), Remote Sensing (RS)

Rahim, I. , Ali, S. and Aslam, M. (2018) GIS Based Landslide Susceptibility Mapping with Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process in District Ghizer, Gilgit Baltistan Pakistan. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 6, 34-49. doi: 10.4236/gep.2018.62003.