Constraints on Landslide-Climate Research Imposed by the Reality of Fieldwork in Central Africa

Climate change is reported to be ‘very likely’ associated with an increasing trend in extreme rainfall intensity over the tropics. Its impact on the timing of landslide initiation however remains poorly understood. Central Africa, located in the tropics, has repeatedly been highlighted as lacking landslide catalogs and landslide-climate studies. We present a research approach, adapted to the data-poor context of Central Africa, to study regional rainfall controls on landslides conditioned by climate change. Preliminary results are presented, including a description of the current rain gauge network installed, an inventory of 83 landslide events with known date and location, and a case study of a landslide occurrence. We show that the underrepresentation of Central Africa in current landslide-climate research is related to the dearth of adequate rainfall ground monitoring networks and spatiotemporal data on landslide occurrence, rather than to the lack of landslide occurrence. Research constraints imposed by the context of Central Africa are highlighted. In presenting this challenging research setting, our aim is not to discourage research in the region, but to identify lessons learned from previous field work and emphasize the abundant opportunities inviting natural hazard studies in Central Africa.