International article publication by Nemus collaborator, Carlos César Jesus

Nemus congratulates its collaborator Carlos César Jesus for the recent publication of the article “Understanding Constraints and Triggering Factors of Landslides: Regional and Local Perspectives on a Drainage Basin” in the international journal Geosciences, published by MDPI (Switzerland).

This publication by Carlos César Jesus, Nemus’ collaborator since 2010, resulted from the work developed in his Master’s thesis “Landslides in the hydrographic basin of Grande da Pipa River (Portugal): regional and local perspectives”, developed at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

The currently published study addresses the conditioning factors and the triggering factors of the landslides that occur in the Grande do Pipa River Basin (Arruda dos Vinhos region), using the exceptional mass movement events that occurred in the region during the 2009/10 hydrological year.

The hydrodynamic behaviour of the River Basin of Grande da Pipa River was analysed using a model of aggregate parameters of the daily sequential water balance, to understand the importance of this behaviour in the stability of the slopes in this region. The local morphological, geotechnical and hydrological conditions that further the instability of the slopes were also analysed through back-analyses of two selected landslides.

The study shows that the main triggering factor of landslides in the 2009/10 hydrological year was the rise of the water table, and that the degree of weathering of the geomechanical characteristics of the Abadia marls and the depth of the altered layer were the main conditioning factors for the landslides. It is concluded that it will be these triggering and conditioning factors interfering, in general, in the landslides that occur annually in this region.

The article can be downloaded using the following link: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/8/1/2 .