How can land use change reveal the frequency and magnitude of natural hazards occurrences? I want to find the relation between these two. I need also some methodology to evaluate a possible relationship.
In most of the cases, LU change is directly linked with natural hazards from unplanned urbanization to floods. @Fadia W Alazawi has referred a good link.
In hill areas deforestation causes removal of natural barrier for minimizing the bank erosion due to flash floods especially along river banks. Further the hill slopes having less vegetation may witness more erosion and mass wasting as well.
In coastal regions large scale cutting of forests (for construction of ports and development of Industrial areas) removes the natural barrier to tsunami.
I think it is better to look at your country's context. Select three different areas geographically located far from each other where natural hazards have occurred in the past 5-10 years . Carry out LU change analysis/mapping. Now relate the data of natural hazards to these LU changes. You may find interesting relationships.
One of the natural hazards is landslide which apart from natural causes as erosion, rainfall, earthquakes, geological factors and external loading is caused by removal of vegetation, interference with, or changes to, natural drainage, modification of slopes by construction of roads, railways, buildings, etc, and mining and quarrying.
Another natural hazard is urban flooding mainly changing land use of flood plain by construction of building and thus narrowing channel which results in restriction of water flow ultimately consequent upon flooding.
I guess another example other than landslide is flooding. It si very common in India to see settlements within a flood plan of the river. Sometime human encroachment in flood plain is not limited to agriculture but land is reclaimed (partly) and permanent settlements are coming up, which is heavily impacted by floods during rain.
In North Queensland, Australia, a number of cyclones over the past few years have affected cities including Innisfail, Cardwell, Mission beach and Cairns. The destruction caused by cyclone Yasi in January 2011 was enough to leave some coastal communities just north of Cardwell, effectively deserted. While planning regulations haven't yet led to the re-zoning of these areas, there is a push from some parts of the community to prevent re development in these areas.
Most of the damage at Cardwell was caused by the storm surge associated with the cyclone, instead of high winds. The storm surge picked up boulders from the sea wall and threw them through the front of people's houses. Without the sea wall though, beach erosion would cause the beach to recede quite quickly, eventual causing people's houses to be undermined. There are changes to the local land use and development planning policy being reviewed now.
Land use change can have a deleterious effect on the environment like adding a new Walmart. Creating retaining ponds which captures pollution run off gives a chance for draining water to reduce pollutants into mainstreams and rivers
The relation of hazard and land use change can be reflected through migration of communities from the area ( Socio-economic dynamics). Diversified changing land use scenario which was not prevailing earlier. quantitative analysis of fellow lands. and mapping of new emerging hazards and land use pattern.
i just published a paper about land use change and in particular change in the artificial drainage network and an example of the changes in network saturation, as an example of the possible effects on flood risk...we anyway focused on the changes in the network due to urbanization and how to detect the changes in the network drainage density and water storage...