Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences: Assessing Geohazards, Environmental Implications and Economic Significance of Subaqueous Landslides
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The challenges facing submarine mass movement researchers and engineers are plentiful and exciting. This book follows several high-profile submarine landslide disasters that have reached the world's attention over the past few years. For decades, researchers have been mapping the world's mass movements. Their significant impacts on the Earth by distributing sediment on phenomenal scales is undeniable. Their importance in the origins of buried resources has long been understood. Their hazard potential ranges from damaging to apocalyptic, frequently damaging local infrastructure and sometimes devastating whole coastlines. Moving beyond mapping advances, the subaqueous mass movement scientists and practitioners are now also focussed on assessing the consequences of mass movements, and the measurement and modelling of events, hazard analysis and mitigation. Many state-of-the-art examples are provided in this book, which is produced under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Program S4SLIDE (Significance of Modern and Ancient Submarine Slope LandSLIDEs).
Entrainment and abrasion of megaclasts during submarine landsliding and their impact on flow behaviour
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Published:September 30, 2019
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CiteCitation
D. M. Hodgson, H. L. Brooks, A. Ortiz-Karpf, Y. Spychala, D. R. Lee, C. A.-L. Jackson, 2019. "Entrainment and abrasion of megaclasts during submarine landsliding and their impact on flow behaviour", Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences: Assessing Geohazards, Environmental Implications and Economic Significance of Subaqueous Landslides, D.G. Lintern, D.C. Mosher, L.G. Moscardelli, P.T. Bobrowsky, C. Campbell, J. Chaytor, J. Clague, A. Georgiopoulou, P. Lajeunesse, A. Normandeau, D. Piper, M. Scherwath, C. Stacey, D. Turmel
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Abstract
Many mass transport complexes (MTCs) contain up to kilometre-scale (mega)clasts encased in a debritic matrix. Although many megaclasts are sourced from the headwall areas, the irregular basal shear surfaces of many MTCs indicate that megaclast entrainment during the passage of flows into the deeper basin is also common. However, the mechanisms responsible for the entrainment of large blocks of substrate, and their influence on the longitudinal behaviour of the associated flows, have not been widely considered. We present examples of megaclasts from exhumed MTCs (the Neuquén Basin, Argentina and the Karoo Basin, South Africa) and MTCs imaged in three-dimensional seismic reflection data (Magdalena Fan, offshore Colombia and Santos Basin, offshore Brazil) to investigate these process–product interactions. We show that highly sheared basal surfaces are well developed in distal locations, sometimes extending beyond their associated deposit. This points to deformation and weakening of the substrate ahead of the flow, suggesting that preconditioning of the substrate by distributed shear ahead of, and to the side of, a mass flow could result in the entrainment of large fragments. An improved understanding of the interactions between flow evolution, seabed topography, and the entrainment and abrasion of megaclasts will help to refine estimates of run-out distances, and therefore the geohazard potential of submarine landslides.
- abrasion
- Africa
- Argentina
- Atlantic Ocean
- behavior
- bottom features
- Brazil
- clasts
- Colombia
- deformation
- flows
- geophysical methods
- geophysical profiles
- geophysical surveys
- Karoo Basin
- mass movements
- mechanism
- Neuquen Basin
- ocean floors
- outcrops
- processes
- reflection methods
- Santos Basin
- sediment transport
- seismic methods
- seismic profiles
- shear
- slumping
- South Africa
- South America
- South Atlantic
- Southern Africa
- surveys
- three-dimensional models
- topography
- transport
- Magdalena Fan