{"id":32830,"date":"2020-01-13T07:09:52","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T07:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=32830"},"modified":"2020-01-13T07:10:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T07:10:46","slug":"burundi-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/01\/13\/burundi-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Burundi: Planet Labs and Sentinel images of the 4 December 2019 landslide disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Burundi: Planet Labs and Sentinel images of the 4 December 2019 landslide disaster<\/h4>\n

On 4 December 2019 intense rainfall triggered a significant, if under-reported, landslide disaster in Burundi in Africa<\/a>.\u00a0 Whilst there were problems in many regions of the country, the most serious impacts occurred in the area around\u00a0 Nyempundu, in Mugina commune in Cibitoke.\u00a0 If you want to take a look, this is around -2.62, 29.09.<\/p>\n

According to the Wikipedia page about the disaster<\/a>, at least 38 people were killed by landslides in this event, and there was substantial damage to infrastructure such as bridges and roads, as well as loss of houses.\u00a0 The response has inevitably been hampered by the remote location.<\/p>\n

This is not an area in which it is particularly easy to get good satellite imagery due to cloud and water vapour.\u00a0 However, Planet Labs<\/a> captured this PlanetScope<\/a> image on 7 December 2019 showing the landslides in the most heavily affected area:-<\/p>\n

\"Burundi

Planet Labs<\/a> image of the landslides in the hills around Nyempundu, in Mugina commune in Cibitoke in Burundi, triggered on 4 December 2019. Planet Labs<\/a> PlanetScope<\/a> image dated 7 December 2019. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The imagery appears to show multiple shallow landslides with some evidence of debris mobilisation through the channel system in the form of debris flows. In some sub-catchments much of the topsoil appears to have been removed.<\/p>\n

These are the same landslides, shown in a Sentinel-2 L1C image, via Sentinel Hub<\/a>.\u00a0 The image is dated 14 December 2019:-<\/p>\n

\"Burundi

Sentinel-2 L1C image<\/a> of the landslides in the hills around Nyempundu, in Mugina commune in Cibitoke in Burundi, triggered on 4 December 2019. Image dated 14 December 2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Although it is lower resolution, the advantage of Sentinel is that it is easy to generate an NDVI image<\/a>, in which the contrast between vegetation (which appears red) and bare soil (which appears tan) is clear.\u00a0 This is an NDVI image from the above Sentinel image, which highlights the landslides:-<\/p>\n

\"Burundi

Sentinel-2 L1C<\/a> NDVI image<\/a> of the landslides in the hills around Nyempundu, in Mugina commune in Cibitoke in Burundi, triggered on 4 December 2019. Image dated 14 December 2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It is clear that in this area of Burundi a substantial landslide disaster has occurred.\u00a0 Of course the damage to the hillsides and sediment in the channel will cause long term problems for the local population.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2020). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planet Labs and Sentinel images of the 4 December 2019 landslide disaster in the hills around Nyempundu, in Mugina commune in Cibitoke, Burundi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":32833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[7203],"tags":[85,28443,556,959,1205,25,20063],"class_list":["post-32830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet-labs","tag-africa","tag-burundi","tag-features","tag-landslide-report","tag-planet-labs","tag-satellite","tag-sentinel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}