Effect of Earthquake and Human Migration on Land Cover and Mass Wasting from The 2010 Haiti Earthquake

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti displaced millions of people and drastically induced mass wasting. The purpose of this study is to explore comprehensive relationships between population displacement and landslide frequency by comparing land use and land cover (LULC) maps of pre- and post-earthquake. To assess the impact of anthropogenic activities, we employed a maximum likelihood method to produce LULC maps from Landsat images for the dry seasons from 2002 to 2015 over the span of 2 or 3 years. Landslide inventory maps were created with ArcGIS and Google Earth to visually detect mass wasting coverage. We assessed LULC characteristics of new landslide areas for pre- and post-earthquake to find out what types of land cover most likely caused landslide events and how they were affected by human migration in Haiti. The result shows that the mass wasting events increased yearly. In conclusion, there was no obvious change in forested land after the earthquake while agriculture, and grass land showed an increase in the number of landslide. Grass land and lightly vegetated areas are easier to access in terms of geographical features. People who evacuated from Port-au-Prince tended not to disturb forest land possibly because there was not enough food, money, and equipment to access remote areas and cut down trees, but rather anthropogenic impact were evident on accessible lands such as grassland and lightly vegetated areas.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Environmental and Urban Geosciences (UMKC)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Kato, Yurika

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lee, Jejung

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/60054

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/60054