Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences: Advances in Process Understanding, Monitoring and Hazard Assessments
This volume focuses on underwater or subaqueous landslides with the overarching goal of understanding how they affect society and the environment. The new research presented here is the result of significant advances made over recent years in directly monitoring submarine landslides, in standardizing global datasets for quantitative analysis, constructing a global database and from leading international research projects. Subaqueous Mass Movements demonstrates the breadth of investigation taking place into subaqueous landslides and shows that, while events like the recent ones in the Indonesian archipelago can be devastating, they are at the smaller end of what the Earth has experienced in the past. Understanding the spectrum of subaqueous landslide processes, and therefore the potential societal impact, requires research across all spatial and temporal scales. This volume delivers a compilation of state-of-the-art papers covering topics from regional landslide databases to advanced techniques for in situ measurements, to numerical modelling of processes and hazards.
Widespread mass-wasting processes off NE Sicily (Italy): insights from morpho-bathymetric analysis
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Published:June 11, 2020
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CiteCitation
Daniele Casalbore, Romano Clementucci, Alessandro Bosman, Francesco Latino Chiocci, Eleonora Martorelli, Domenico Ridente, 2020. "Widespread mass-wasting processes off NE Sicily (Italy): insights from morpho-bathymetric analysis", Subaqueous Mass Movements and their Consequences: Advances in Process Understanding, Monitoring and Hazard Assessments, A. Georgiopoulou, L. A. Amy, S. Benetti, J. D. Chaytor, M. A. Clare, D. Gamboa, P. D. W. Haughton, J. Moernaut, J. J. Mountjoy
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Abstract
The NE Sicilian continental margin is largely affected by canyons and related landslide scars. Two main types of submarine canyons are recognizable: the first type carves the shelf up to depths <20 m, a few hundred metres from the coast, acting as a main collector for sediments transported by hyperpycnal flows and/or littoral drift. These canyons mostly have a V-shaped cross-section and are characterized by a strong axial incision, where a network of dendritic gullies carving the canyon flanks converges. The second type of canyon occurs where the shelf is wider, hindering the direct connection between the subaerial and submarine drainage system. This setting exhibits canyon heads mostly confined to the shelf break, characterized by a weaker axial incision of the canyon and U-shaped cross-section. A total of 280 landslide scars are recognized in the study area and these are divided into three groups according to their morphology and location. A morphometric analysis of these scars is performed to investigate which parameters might be key factors in controlling instability processes and how they correlate with each other. We also try to assess the possible tsunamigenic potential associated with these landslide events by coupling the morphometric analysis with semi-empirical relationships available in the literature.
- bathymetry
- bottom features
- continental margin
- continental shelf
- correlation coefficient
- Europe
- geologic hazards
- Italy
- landslides
- littoral drift
- marine environment
- mass movements
- Mediterranean Sea
- morphometry
- natural hazards
- ocean floors
- risk assessment
- sediment transport
- sedimentation
- shelf-slope break
- Sicily Italy
- slope stability
- slumping
- Southern Europe
- spatial distribution
- statistical analysis
- subaerial environment
- submarine canyons
- submarine environment
- terrestrial environment
- transport
- tsunamis
- Gulf of Patti
- Cape d'Orlando