Identification of landslides and vegetation recovery assesment after Hurricane Mitch in La Ceiba and El Porvenir, Honduras

Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 1998 produced unprecedented damages throughout the country. Estimations indicate that landslides damaged 70% of the road network and cause nearly 1,000 fatalities. Torrential rainfall from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 triggered many landslides within the counties of La Ceiba and El Porvenir in the Atlantic region of Honduras in a National reserve area. In this study we identify landslides after Hurricane Mitch in La Ceiba and El Porvernir county areas and its vegetation recovery using Landsat satellite images. Multidate Landsat satellite images were acquired previous (1997) and after (1999) the hurricane Mitch. The images were pre-processed and used to determine change detection using Change Vector Analysis (CVA). To eliminate undesirable change pixels and noise, majority filter and slope and were used. The vegetation recovery is estimated using a Vegetation Recovery Rate (VRR) calculated from NDVI derived from satellite images acquired in 2005 and 2011 for Hurricane Mitch. The identification of landslides and the vegetation recovery analysis provides useful information for locating the damage caused by landslides and monitoring their recovery after a Hurricane event. This information helps for different purposes such as relocation efforts of population, urban planning, estimation of damage caused by landslides, and planning the vegetation recovery of the landslides in perturbated protected areas to reduce sediment flows.