Seismic velocity changes associated with a flash flood crisis as a proxy for slope instability
Abstract
Abstract Climate change leads to increasingly intense and frequent extreme weather events, which heighten hydro-geological risk and cause severe damage to infrastructure, communities, and the environment. Landslides and floods triggered by sudden storms are difficult to forecast, identify, and monitor. A promising approach, aimed at identifying, monitoring, and eventually forecasting landslide events, involves analysing ambient seismic noise recorded by seismic networks. In this study, ambient noise seismic interferometry is applied to characterize the severe September 2022 hydro-meteorological event in central Italy. A rapid relative seismic velocity drop ($\delta v/v$) of $0.2\%$ down to $\approx 1\text{ km}$ depth emerged roughly two days after peak rainfall, centred in the region of maximum precipitation and highest landslide density. Over the next five days, this anomaly gradually expanded spatially, covering nearly $40\%$ of the affected area, before recovering to pre-event baseline levels. This spatio-temporal response is physically consistent with pore-pressure propagation via hydraulic diffusion with estimated diffusivity of $D \approx 3\text{ m}^2/\text{s}$, consistent with local geology. Integrated into real-time environmental monitoring frameworks, $\delta v/v$ and its derived metrics could serve as effective proxies for slope instability and fragility, enhancing hydro-geological hazard assessment.
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