TITLE:
Contribution to Study and Mapping Landslide Hazard in the West Cameroon Region: Case of Double Landslide on Foréké Escarpment
AUTHORS:
Marie Roumy Ouafo, Onana Ntouda, Amos Mogo, Olivier Leumbe
KEYWORDS:
Western Highlands, Landslide, Slope, Creep, Mapping
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.12 No.12,
December
3,
2025
ABSTRACT: With nearly 1.3 billion people living in mountainous regions worldwide, exposure to landslide risks is very high. Cameroon, with its morphological, climatic and soil diversity, is the site of frequent landslides. With climate change, the frequency and intensity of these disasters have increased significantly, and they now represent a threat to the lives and livelihoods of people in the western highlands. Over the past five years, the West Cameroon region has experienced two major landslides. The study produces a regional landslide hazard map for West Cameroon using an AHP‐based GIS approach and Landsat land-use data. Four topographic factors extracted from SRTM DEMs are weighted with Saaty’s method to build the hazard layer. The resulting hazard map shows 10.7% of the region in a high-risk class. A field case study of the 5 November 2024 double landslide on the Foréké escarpment links creep on a 56˚ slope, clay-rich soils, and road construction. Basic mitigation ideas (rainfall monitoring, slope stabilization) are proposed.