Abstract

Landslides are the major natural hazard, causing significant damage to properties, lives and engineering projects in all mountainous areas in the world. In order to estimate the role of the landslides in erosion processes and evaluation of their risks, it is necessary to quantify landslides. This quantifying can be performed by applying the probability distributions that show the landslide size against the probability density. This study was investigated the behavior of landslide areas and volumes on Frequency distributions in Mazandaran province. Also total number, area and volume of landslides that have occurred over time were estimated using the approach suggested by Malamud et al. Result of cumulative frequency distribution of landslide area and volume revealed the significant proportion of large landslides in determining the total landslide area and volume. According to Malamud et al. approach total number of landslides were estimated to be 9823±2323. These landslides have been obliterated over the time by soil erosion, vegetation growth or by human activities and total of their affected area and volume by these landslides were 31.5±7.1 km² and 0.232±0.052 km³, respectively. The obtained results also presented an area of 2×10^-3 km² as a critical threshold area for transition between resistances against slope failure.