Modeling Morpho-Structural Settings Exploiting Bedding Data Obtained Through the Interpretation of Stereoscopic Aerial Photographs

Landslide abundance is controlled by multiple factors, including the presence and attitude of beddings, foliation, faults, joints and cleavage systems. Few attempts were made to exploit bedding attitude (BA) data (or data on similar types of rock discontinuities) in statistical or physically based models for regional slope stability analysis. A reason for the lack of applications lays in the complexity of the bedding data, and in the difficulty in the treatment and modelling of circular information. Typically, BA data are collected as point data through field surveys, and suffer from heterogeneity in their spatial distribution. The latter problem is particularly important due to the limited possibility to collect BA data in areas of difficult access. An additional problem lays in the spatial interpolation of the BA data, which are directional data that cannot be interpolated using standard approaches. We build on previous work where we proposed an approach to obtain BA data from bedding traces (BT) i.e., linear signatures of layered rocks on the topographic surface, obtained through the visual interpretation of aerial photographs, and to interpolate the BA data to construct maps showing the geometrical relationship between BA data and slope geometry i.e., maps showing cataclinal, orthoclinal, and anaclinal slopes. In this work, we consider the uncertainties in the definition of the BAs that are used in the production of morpho-structural domain maps, and we investigate the relationships between the morpho-structural domains and landslide abundance in a study area in Umbria, Italy.