The role of forests in soil protection: root reinforcement and slope stability evaluation at different analysis scales.

Rainfall-induced shallow landslides are natural hazards with potential high impact to the human and natural environment. Since the frequency and intensity of critical rainfall events are expected to increase in the future due to climate change, the escalation of these critical events will produce expected consequences. For this reason, mitigation strategies must be identified to protect natural and man-made environments. There is worldwide interest in developing reliable slope stability models capable of locating areas most susceptible to landslides, and identifying the correct management of direct protection forest in order to optimize their function. To adequately evaluate the effect of vegetation on soil stability, root reinforcement models must be able to provide values applicable and integrable into the slope stability models. This work promotes the use of applications developed from recent scientific studies, available for both academic and professional fields. After analyzing state of the art concerning slope stability and root reinforcement models, three case studies are presented showing different spatial scale analyses and based on the use of three software: RBM++ for tree scale, SOSlope for local scale, and SlideforMAP for regional scale.