Seismologically understanding the basal sliding depth and groundwater level for deep-seated landslide

Deep-seated landslide is one of most catastrophic and disastrous geohazards. Probing the spatial extent and basal sliding interface of the deep-seated landslide is not only particularly critical for understanding landslide size (i.e., volume and collapsed area), but also crucial for landslide hazard assessment. The conventional investigations such as the borehole drilling and seismic profiles are usually challenging for investigating landslide body comprehensively in space due to the expensive cost and the limitations of geophysical exploration. Recent studies of ambient seismic noise monitoring have provided an additional tool to monitor the subsurface medium in a non-invasive and relatively inexpensive way, which advances the investigating landslide geological structure. Here, we applied the ambient seismic noise monitoring technique to deep-seated landslide at Fanfan, Ilan area in northeastern Taiwan. The multiple geophysical, geotechnical and geodetic approaches including active multi-channel analysis of surface wave (MASW), real-time kinematic (RTK) measurement, campaign GPS, borehole time-domain reflectometer (TDR) and groundwater level (GWL) gauge are adopted during our monitoring period. A series of relation analysis found that the variations of frequency-dependent seismic velocity changes (dv/v), TDR sliding behavior, time series of groundwater level associated to two heavy rainfall episodes concurrently. With the available shear-wave velocity model (VS) derived from MASW, the depth range sensitive to different frequency band for surface wave can be certainly determined. Clear 3-5 Hz dv/v measurement at seismic station of V01 collocated with GWL gauge can be found with the largest reduction of ~ 1%, coinciding with 1 m GWL increasing. Models with different thickness layer (H), basal depth (d), Vs perturbation (dVs) were exercised, and a good fit between predicted spectral dv/v and the frequency-dependent dv/v measurements at seismic station V02 with H = 0.5 m, d = 21 m and dVs = 0.5. TDR measurement showed the obvious sliding signals is consistent with the shear zones identified by borehole log with the depth ranging from 48 to 50 m. These results demonstrate that multidisciplinary perspectives are needed to increase a better understanding of landslide structure. Consequently, a model linking variations of dv/v and TDR measurements is proposed to better understand sliding characteristics, which could potentially toward failure prediction of deep-seated landslide.