Assessment of ecological-geomorphological strength and risk of geosystems of the north-eastern slope of the Great Caucasus (within Azerbaijan)
Authors: Tarikhazer Stara 
Published: September 2022

Problem statement. The increased human pressure on natural geo-complexes is causing the revival of undesirable processes that create an extensive risk for the inhabitants of these regions. Alpine-type orogenic zones, which belong to the northeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus, are distinguished from many geomorphological systems by excessive activity of endo- and exogenous processes. Therefore, at this time, the task of diagnosing and assessing the ecological and geomorphological risk that the population faces in the development of new territories of the region seems to be important.

Analysis of recent research and publications. After analyzing a number of techniques used to assess the landslide and mudflow hazards, the conclusion was made that most of them had their flaws.

Research method. There are a large number of methods for assessing the risk of environmental management and predicting hazardous exodynamic processes. However, in modern conditions, these techniques are not sufficiently reliable. This, in turn, determines the relevance and the need to develop new or modernised methods of strategies for the prevention, protection, and elimination of the consequences of catastrophes and natural disasters.

The purpose of this work is to reveal the geomorphological features and dynamics of the development of the most dangerous and often repeating landslide and mudflow processes based on field geomorphological studies, as well as fund literature, indicate the reasons for their formation and propose measures to combat them.

Research results. The article discusses the results of ecological and geomorphological surveys on the northeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus, dedicated to the assessment of landslide and mudflow risk for the period from 1990 to 2020. To assess them in order to obtain morphometric characteristics (including the down gradient of slopes, the length and shape of slopes, areas of mudflow centers), large-scale (M 1:100000) topographic maps were used, as well as interpretation materials for different-scale and multi-temporal ASP. Based on the interpretation of the ASP within the studied region, in order to clarify the general picture of the dissection of the modern relief of the studied region, a map of morphometric tension was compiled, which includes the degree of vertical dissection of the territory, the down gradient of slopes, etc., and also maps of the risk of landslides and mudflows were compiled according to the degree of danger of landslide and mudflow processes, and the area of their distribution was calculated. Landslide and mudflow risk analysis mainly used high-resolution aerospace imagery (ASI) from CNES / Airbus, Maxar Technologies (GeoEye-1), and medium resolution Sentinel-2A and 2B. Thus visual and semi-automatic interpretation (classification with training) was performed in the ArcGIS environment. As a result, taking into account the morphometric tension, as well as the mudflow and landslide hazards, a map of the morphodynamic tension of the northeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus was compiled, which makes it possible to reveal the modern nature of the manifestation of exodynamic processes, to predict and assess the risk coming from them.

Conclusion. The results of the research will make it possible to use the obtained data for the development of the Program for the safe and sustainable functioning and development for the purpose of recreational and tourist development of the difficult of access mountain geosystems of Azerbaijan.