Quantifying the impact of human activities on geological hazards in mountainous areas: evidence from Shennongjia, China

An increasing number of geological hazards threaten human life and property in mountainous areas, especially in China. Existing studies on the prevention of geological hazards mainly focus on natural factors and ignore the impact of human activities on geological hazards. This study aims to enrich our knowledge of the impact of human activities through a case study from the Shennongjia mountainous area, China. Spatial regression models were used to quantify the impact of different construction activities on geological hazards based on remote sensing images, local statistical data, land-use data and geological hazards distribution data. The Shennongjia case revealed the following: (1) The global Moran’s I index of the distribution of geological hazards was 0.35, which showed obvious spatial autocorrelation characteristics. (2) From the multiple model comparison, the spatial lag model was more suitable for quantifying the impact of human activities on geological hazards than the least squares regression model and the spatial error model. (3) Road construction and building construction were the main causes of geological hazards, whereas agricultural activities and mining activities had only a limited effect. The evidence reported here could enable governments to constrain human activities and to reduce the geological hazards in mountainous areas across China and beyond.