TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rumpf, M.
A1  - Böniger, Urs
A1  - Tronicke, Jens
T1  - Refraction seismics to investigate a creeping hillslope in the Austrian
 Alps
JF  - ENGINEERING GEOLOGY
N2  - Assessing the human and economic threat introduced by sliding or creeping masses is of major importance in landslide hazard assessment and mitigation. Especially, in the densely populated alpine region unstable hillslopes represent a major hazard to men and infrastructure. Detailed knowledge, especially, of the dominant site-specific controlling factors such as subsurface architecture and geology is thereby key in assessing slope vulnerability. In order to quantify the geological variations at a creeping hillslope in the Austrian Alps, we have collected six 2D refraction seismic profiles. We propose using a layer-based inversion strategy to reconstruct P-wave velocity models from first arrival times. Considering the geological complexity at such sites, the selected inversion approach eases the interpretability of geological structures given intrinsic optimization for only a discrete, user-defined, number of layers. As the applied layer-based inversion approach fits our travel time data equally well as traditional smooth inversion approaches, it represents a feasible mean to summarize the structural complexity often present at such sites. Analysis of the inversion results illustrates that bedrock topography clearly deviates from a previously assumed planar surface and exhibits distinct variations across the slope extension. Bedrock topography additionally impacts the intermediate geological units and, thus, this information is critical for further analyses such as geomechanical modeling. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KW  - Hillslope
KW  - Refraction seismics
KW  - Austrian Alps
KW  - Layer-based inversion
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2012.09.008
SN  - 0013-7952
VL  - 151
IS  - 24
SP  - 37
EP  - 46
PB  - ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
CY  - AMSTERDAM
ER  -