LANDSLIDE EXTRACTION FROM SENTINEL-2 IMAGE IN SIWALIK OF SURKHET DISTRICT, NEPAL

Abstract. Locating landslides and determining its extent is deemed an important task in estimating loss and damage and carry out mitigation works. As landslides are recurring phenomena in the research site, Siwalik Hills of western Nepal, freely available Sentinel-2 satellite images were considered to delineate landslides. The method employed in this process was Object-Based Image Analysis carried out in eCognition software using multiresolution segmentation algorithm. Parameters taken for segmentation were a scale of 20, the shape of 0.3, and compactness of 0.5. When a threshold value of < 0.35 in NDVI was used to distinguish landslides from image objects, some non-landslide objects were also selected. These false positives were removed successively using the threshold values on different bands, band ratios, slope information, hillshade and geometrical properties of image objects. There were altogether 264 landslides detected in the study area with size ranging from 300 m² to 1675 m² and landslide density of approximately 2 per km². The accuracy, when compared to reference inventory, showed correctness and completeness measuring 80.28% and 66.27% respectively. These results showed semi-automatic landslide extraction was successful and Sentinel-2 can be used for similar tasks in other areas of Siwalik.