Méthodes d'analyse du fonctionnement hydrogéologique des versants instables

Significant progress was made these last decades in the development of hydrogeological methods. However, these new methods are still very little used in the problematics of unstable slopes, mainly because of the hydrogeological complexity, which characterizes them (thin aquifers, discontinuous media, succession of saturated and unsaturated zones, lower permeability, higher hydraulic gradients, evolution of the permeability in time in relation to slope movements, etc.). Consequently, the approach usually developed to study slope instabilities is based on the setting-up of relations between hydroclimatologic parameters and slope movements. This approach exclusively concentrates on causes and effects, without developing the processes induced by these causes and responsible for these effects. This "black-box" type of relation is in some cases satisfactory, but in others, the analysis of the induced hydrogeological processes becomes essential to understand the functioning of the instability phenomenon and to predict the movements. Our project aims at introducing this missing link to allow a better understanding of the hydrogeological processes caused by particular hydroclimatologic conditions. It is a matter of determining the relation between hydroclimatologic phenomena and a critical hydrogeological state, which can lead a phenomenon of instability to reactivation or to a state of rupture. Unfortunately, this relation cannot be approached in the same way for all instabilities throughout the world. Owing to the specificity of each slope, the relation must be established individually, which may lead to a hydrogeological typology of unstable slopes. Accordingly, we propose a methodology comprising a succession of stages that are useful for the understanding of the hydrogeological processes underlying slopes. This approach aims at establishing a hydrogeological assessment on the scale of the slope or, if necessary, on a regional scale, in order to determine groundwater infiltration zones, trajectory and velocity of groundwater run-off as well as outlet areas. The usual ways of doing this are generally the measurement of the river flow rate, a pluviometric follow-up or direct hydrogeological measurements via piezometers. These traditional approaches generally remain limited by problems of space representativeness or life span; on top of this come problems of cost due to the often chaotic morphology of the slope instabilities and the fact that they are not easily accessible. To make up for these various problems, we propose a complete methodological approach to improve the understanding of the groundwater run-off systems for the unstable slopes: A characterization of the geological domain based on geophysical measurements in addition to the borehole data. This approach, original in the specific context of unstable slopes, makes it possible to obtain a three-dimensional representation of the heterogeneity which composes the subsurface grounds in a fast, ef