Kun He, Luigi Lombardo , Ling Chang, Nitheshnirmal Sadhasivam, Xiewen Hu, Zhice Fang, Ashok Dahal , Islam Fadel, Gang Luo, Hakan Tanyas

Mountainous landscapes affected by strong earthquakes exhibit relatively higher landslide susceptibility in post-seismic periods compared to pre-seismic conditions. This concept is referred to as the earthquake legacy effect and is mainly examined by monitoring either rapid landslide occurrences or slow-moving landslides over time. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the concept, this research examines post-seismic hillslope evolution by examining the deformation time series generated by the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar technique over the entirety of the area affected by the 2017 Mw 6.4 Nyingchi, China earthquake. Our results show that the average post-seismic hillslope deformation level in the study area is still higher than its pre-seismic counterpart approximately four and a half years after the earthquake. Our findings trigger further research questions regarding whether hillslopes could fully recover after a major earthquake or gain a new level of hillslope susceptibility caused by intense ground shaking.