Published on 10 October 2024
While satellite remote sensing allows for regional-scale measurements, local knowledge and field validation remain crucial for accurately understanding of the processes at play and the environmental context. This was once again underscored by researchers from the Royal Museum for Central Africa's STEREO-IV project LACTOSE during a recent two-week field campaign in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Data and partnerships
The LACTOSE project (Slow-moving LAndslides in Changing TrOpical landscapes: dynamics and hillslope connectivity from SpacE — 2023 - 2026) aims to understand how natural and human-induced environmental conditions control slow-moving landslides (SMLs) and their sediment contribution to river systems in changing tropical landscapes.
The project team therefore carried out field visits to two fast-growing Central African cities: Bujumbura (Burundi) and Bukavu (Democratic Republic of Congo). These two cities face different challenges, but are strongly shaped and impacted by intense landsliding and erosion processes. Over the course of two weeks, they visited several large SML sites, gathering high-resolution datasets to better identify and understand landslide mechanisms and their interactions with river systems.
 |
These visits were also an opportunity to strengthen long-established partnerships with local researchers from the University of Bujumbura and the Université Officielle de Bukavu, sharing knowledge and experience and brainstorming ideas for future partnerships. The visit also provided the opportunity to organise a second two-day workshop on drones and photogrammetry, focusing this year on advanced photogrammetry theory and practical data acquisition techniques.
Better understanding for risk assessment
Some of the sites visited have been the scene of major landslides that have had a major impact on local communities. These include one of the world's most densely populated active SMLs (see the article Acceleration of a large deep-seated tropical landslide due to urbanization feedbacks published in Nature Geoscience), a landslide that temporarily blocked the river connecting Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika in early 2024, and another that destroyed a large school complex north-west of Bukavu over the past year. These events, which are reactivations of ancient landslides, underline the urgent need to understand the control mechanisms, triggering factors and evolution of such hazards.
Overall, the LACTOSE project aims at advancing our understanding of landslides in rapidly changing tropical landscapes. This is an essential step towards improving risk assessment and understanding the brader impact of environmental change, whether human-induced or natural, on sediment dynamics.
More information
For more information about the LACTOSE project and recent outputs, consult the project page on this website and the website https://georiska.africamuseum.be/en/activities/lactose.
Also check out the article Slow-moving landslides a growing, but ignored, threat to mountain communities on the AfricaMuseum website.