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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2637</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Unraveling Spatial Dependencies in Landslide Susceptibility using Directed Acyclic Graphs</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Meng</surname>
<given-names>Qingkai</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2019-9702</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dai</surname>
<given-names>Yong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Catani</surname>
<given-names>Filippo</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5185-4725</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Shilong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Qiuhui</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Qing</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Peng</surname>
<given-names>Ying</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Han</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Meng</surname>
<given-names>Ying</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Engineering Resilience, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610213, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Civil Engineering and Water Resources, Laboratory of Ecological Protection and High Quality Development in the Upper Yellow River, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Machine Intelligence and Slope Stability Laboratory, Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, Padua, 35129, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>College of Geophysics, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>The College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>20</day>
<month>05</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>29</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Qingkai Meng et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2637/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2637/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2637/egusphere-2026-2637.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2637/egusphere-2026-2637.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Data-driven methods for landslide susceptibility assessment (LSA) often suffer from spurious correlations and &amp;ldquo;black-box&amp;rdquo; opacity, failing to capture the spatial dependency processes underlying landslide development. To address these limitations, we propose a directed acyclic graph (DAG)-informed interpretable framework by integrating structure-learning algorithms and graph attention models. This approach enables the identification of spatial dependency pathways and quantifies the propagation magnitudes (weights of connected links) of landslide conditioning factors. We applied this framework to the Ili River Basin, Xinjiang, China. A total of 14 robust spatial dependency chains were identified, and the dominant susceptibility-related chains were categorized into four types: (1) Elevation&amp;ndash;climate-driven pathways (Elevation &amp;rarr; Precipitation &amp;rarr; NDWI &amp;rarr; Landslide; Elevation &amp;rarr; Precipitation &amp;rarr; Temperature &amp;rarr; Snow Depth &amp;rarr; NDWI &amp;rarr; Landslide); (2) Tectonic-controlled pathways (Distance to faults &amp;rarr; PGA &amp;rarr; Landslide); (3) Topographic dominated pathways (Slope &amp;rarr; Curvature &amp;rarr; Landslide); and (4) Hydrological driven pathways (Distance to rivers &amp;rarr; NDWI &amp;rarr; Landslide). Using a novel importance-weighted decoupling method, we generated pathway-specific susceptibility maps. These four chains account for 18.32%, 15.74%, 17.67%, and 16.76% of the high-susceptibility areas, respectively. These areas are predominantly clustered in mid&amp;ndash;high mountainous, high-intensity seismic, and weakened lithological belt regions. Our proposed framework advances LSA from statistical prediction to dependency-informed explanation, providing decision-makers with a scientific basis for interpreting susceptibility variations across different spatial and environmental settings.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="29"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42371091</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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