Landslide Risk Associated with Glacier Tourism in the Mt. Everest Region (Sagarmatha National Park), High-Mountain Nepal

A critical assessment of landslide risk in Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal, reveals that glacier tourism infrastructure—including trekking routes, helipads, and campsites—faces significant exposure to landslides despite low direct intersection with active scars. Land Surface Temperature (LST) emerged as the dominant factor influencing landslide occurrence, followed by rainfall, elevation, slope, and specific land cover types like barren land and alpine meadows. Using advanced models—Random Forest (91% accuracy), Logistic Regression (87%), and Frequency Ratio (84%)—the study highlights that while only 0.52% of trekking routes directly overlap with active landslides, a substantial 28% lie within high-exposure zones. This underscores the vulnerability of glacier tourism destinations to both typical and paraglacial landslides, posing serious implications for Nepal’s tourism sector.

Sapkota, L., Liu, Q., Khanal, N. R., Gurung, B., & Luo, Y. (2026). Landslide Risk Associated with Glacier Tourism in the Mt. Everest Region (Sagarmatha National Park), High-Mountain Nepal. Earth, 7(2), 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/earth7020043