QUANTIFYING LANDSCAPE CHANGE AT VERMONT’S LARGEST LANDSLIDE USING TIME-LAPSE SPATIAL DIFFERENCING OF 3D SURFACE MODELS FROM DRONE AND FIELD SURVEY DATA, WATERBURY, VERMONT

On May 31, 2019, a landslide near Waterbury in central Vermont removed >200,000 m³ of glacial lake deposits from a hillside in the Mt. Mansfield State Forest and transported the material across Cotton Brook, creating a dam near its toe. In the months following the slide, the brook breached the toe, removing ≥54, 000 m³ of sediment and transporting it ~1.3 km downstream into the Waterbury reservoir where it formed a large sedimentary delta. The delta grew 243% by Fall, 2020 until it began to erode into the reservoir in 2021. A collaborative team from the Vermont Geological Survey, the Vermont Agency of Transportation, Norwich University, and the University of Vermont team began a yearly monitoring of these events in 2019 using field-based mapping of bedrock and surficial geology, photogrammetry using annual drone surveys, and two LiDAR data sets.

The first LiDAR data set was collected in 2014 prior to the slide by the Vermont Center for Geographic Information and the second after the slide in 2021 by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Time-lapse spatial differencing allowed us to (1) quantify changes in surface topography over time, (2) calculate sediment budgets from source (landslide) to sink (delta), and (3) determine how mechanisms of mass wasting changed over time.

Through this study we have also documented the following: (a) a second slip event in 2020 that removed ~25, 000 m³ of additional material from the hillside and contributed to growth of the Waterbury reservoir delta, (b) bedrock basins defined by the intersection of bedrock foliation and orthogonal fracture sets that appear to control slip location and geometry, (c) bedrock structures that influence the subsurface hydrology of the slip, which is expressed by oxidized groundwater seeps and a preferential deepening of rills into gullies on one side, and (d) how horizontal variations in the type and thickness of glacial lake sediments influenced mass-wasting mechanisms, including catastrophic failure of the hillside, the slumping of landslide sidewalls, the formation of crescent-shaped earth fractures, channeling around slumps, and the removal of material in deepening gullies. This study shows how a large landslide evolves from a major failure phase through later erosional and colluvial adjustments and supplies sediment at an episodic rate to the surface water system.