Improving Prediction, Response, and Safety through Real-Time Surface Monitoring with RTK-GNSS Arrays, Oregon, USA

Across the state of Oregon, USA, landslides regularly diminish the reliability of transportation systems and pose risks to nearby communities, motorists, and infrastructure. Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of these active hazards is critical for predicting and mitigating risk to person and property. Following the catastrophic failure of the Hooskanaden landslide in late February 2019 (Alberti et al. 2020), our team began instrumenting landslides across the State with RTK-GNSS arrays that provide the 3D position of strategically placed rovers installed on the landslide surface with centimeter-level accuracy. These systems telemeter data to cloud storage every 30-minutes, providing the opportunity for real-time monitoring and analysis.

 

Here, we evaluate the displacement timeseries of 11 instrumented landslides across the State, and investigate responses to precipitation both spatially (i.e., for each instrumented site and locally within each landslide) and temporally (i.e., how rainfall response may change throughout the wet season). We focus on the kinematics of the Hooskanaden landslide, which demonstrates variable behavior, and the Arizona Inn landslide, which surged in 2023 and was tracked in real time. With the expanded network of systems installed in diverse geologic and climatic regimes, we explore the sensitivity of several slow-moving landslides to hydrometeorological forcing, as well as the evolving kinematics of landslide complexes evaluated over the monitoring period. These data offer insights into the spectrum of slow-moving landslide behaviors, providing a deeper understanding of both landslide sensitivity and kinematics. The findings demonstrate the utility of integrating high-resolution displacement monitoring with rainfall data in investigating the temporal and spatial evolution of landslides.