Kinematics of a landslide derived from archival photogrammetry and GPS data.

The evolution of the Patigno landslide, a deep-seated gravitational slope deformation in the Northern Apennine range (Italy), was investigated using archival photogrammetry, and GPS observations from a permanent station located inside the landslide. Historical aerial photographs of the area taken in 1975 (scale 1:13,000), 1987 (1:13,000) and 2004 (1:30,000) were co-registered into the same reference frame using an unconventional method based on the detection of homologous points in multi-temporal models. Three DTMs were produced using a Digital Photogrammetric Workstation and compared. The displacement vectors of 293 points in the landslide were determined. The average movement velocity of the GPS station since 2004 (about 3.5 cm yr) agrees with the mean displacement rate obtained from photogrammetry. Furthermore, the estimated velocity varies seasonally between 3 and 6 cm yr. This variability correlated with rainfall suggests that the creep of the landslide is influenced by hydrological factors