Interpretable AutoML and Double Machine Learning for Landslide Susceptibility Assessment in Tongren, Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

Landslide susceptibility assessment in cold, high-altitude regions is complicated by interactions among topographic, lithological, hydrological, and anthropogenic factors. Machine learning methods are widely used, but model selection, spatially independent evaluation, and interpretation of covariate-adjusted associations remain challenging. This study developed an integrated framework for landslide susceptibility assessment in Tongren City, on the northeastern margin of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. The framework combined H2O AutoML, nested spatial cross-validation, Shapley additive explanations (SHAP), partial dependence plots (PDPs), and double machine learning (DML). Each of the 20 sampling realizations included 217 landslide points and 217 non-landslide points, with 13 conditioning factors retained after collinearity screening. DML used partially linear regression with spatial cross-fitting across 200 repetitions to estimate covariate-adjusted associations. Stacked Ensemble achieved the highest mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.953 ± 0.009 across the 20 realizations. Spatial out-of-fold evaluation showed that the 20% of the study area with the highest susceptibility contained 93.27% ± 1.51% of held-out landslides (mean ± standard deviation). Elevation, distance to roads, lithology, distance to faults, and land use/land cover together accounted for 76.69% of the total mean absolute SHAP values. PDPs revealed nonlinear relationships between conditioning factors and model-predicted susceptibility. Elevation, interpreted as a proxy for valley position, and distance to roads were the only factors with statistically significant negative covariate-adjusted associations after multiple-testing correction. The random common cause (RCC) test indicated that DML estimates remained stable under the random-covariate perturbations examined. The framework distinguishes predictive contributions from covariate-adjusted associations and supports landslide monitoring and spatial planning in cold, high-altitude plateau transition zones.