Analysis on Correlation between Reservoir Landslide Deformation and Groundwater Level Changes

Abstract

Variation of landslide groundwater level caused by the changes of rainfall and reservoir water level has a close relationship with the revivification of hydrodynamic landslide as well as its long-term stability. In this paper, the correlation between groundwater levels and displacement of reservoir landslide has been studied using the introduced Maximum Entropy-Copula method (MECM) based on monitoring data of ground levels and displacement of Donglingxin (DLX) landslide. The results showed that marginal and joint distributions generated by Copula-MEM can not only well fit for the distribution and characteristics of the groundwater level change and landslide displacement without considering the linear hypothesis, but also manifest a strong tail correlation between groundwater level and displacement of the landslide. Specifically, the strong tail correlation found in variations of displacement and groundwater level of DLX landslide from 2009 to 2012 indicates that MECM may serve as a new solution for the study concerning factors of influencing the correlation of deformation of reservoir landslides. What’s more, it can also predict landslide displacement through the actual elevation of the groundwater level to a certain extent, providing a theoretical basis for people in charge of early warnings of landslides.