Citation

Wang CW, Shen CW, Lin LL. Disaster Adv. 2012; 5(4): 144-149.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Shankar Gargh)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Located at the squeeze zone between the Eurasia Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate, Taiwan has geologically brittle and steep slopelands as well as short and torrential rivers. Following the 921 earthquake and combination of frequent typhoons with heavy rain attacks, natural disasters such as debris flow, collapse and landslide occur easily time after time. Also, because Taiwan has a small area and a highly dense population, the farmland resource is limited; economic structure changes drastically accompanying quick industrial developments. Land uses in flats are very near saturation and development and utilization of slopelands are therefore of growing concern. However, improper development activities also increasingly take place and cause issues in soil and water conservation. In order to enhance slopeland management, rational conservation and utilization shall be implemented according to utilization limitations and stability of the land so that slopeland resources can be utilized in a sustainable way. This study aims to research rational utilization of slopelands and use for land conservation in Taiwan. Jhuoshuei River is selected as the scope of the case study, using watersheds as analysis units. Seven vulnerability factors are selected, namely total curvature, average slope, average elevation, SPI, standard deviation of aspect, land use and NDVI, in companion with a model of disaster susceptibility created based on logistic regression; this model interprets the success rate curve of disaster susceptibility and gives an Area under the curve (AUC) of up to 91.1%.