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Large Submarine Landslides on Continental Slopes: Geohazards, Methane Release, and Climate Change

Large Submarine Landslides on Continental Slopes: Geohazards, Methane Release, and Climate Change
Large Submarine Landslides on Continental Slopes: Geohazards, Methane Release, and Climate Change
Submarine landslides on open continental slopes can be prodigious in scale. They are an important process for global sediment fluxes, and can generate very damaging tsunamis. Submarine landslides are far harder to monitor directly than terrestrial landslides, and much greater uncertainty surrounds their preconditioning factors and triggers. Submarine slope failure often occurs on remarkably low (< 2°) gradients that are almost always stable on land, indicating that particularly high excess pore pressures must be involved. Earthquakes trigger some large submarine landslides, but not all major earthquakes cause widespread slope failure. The headwalls of many large submarine landslides appear to be located in water depths that are too deep for triggering by gas hydrate dissociation. The available evidence indicates that landslide occurrence is either weakly (or not) linked to changes in sea level or atmospheric methane abundance, or the available dates for open continental slope landslides are too imprecise to tell. Similarly, available evidence does not strongly support a view that landslides play an important role in methane emissions that cause climatic change. However, the largest and best-dated open continental slope landslide (the Storegga Slide) coincides with a major cooling event 8,200 years ago. This association suggests that caution may be needed when stating that there is no link between large open slope landslides and climate change.
1042-8275
32-45
Talling, Peter
1cbac5ec-a9f8-4868-94fe-6203f30b47cf
Clare, Michael
b26da858-9c08-4784-aaa9-7092efcd94bd
Urlaub, Morelia
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Pope, Ed
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Hunt, James
2e95b3c8-734f-4ade-8010-8ed32fe4fe5e
Watt, Sebastian F.L.
8cde9189-35d1-450c-bff8-f7c9107eb635
Talling, Peter
1cbac5ec-a9f8-4868-94fe-6203f30b47cf
Clare, Michael
b26da858-9c08-4784-aaa9-7092efcd94bd
Urlaub, Morelia
f5a21932-9794-4008-b0a9-72bb366098b8
Pope, Ed
2043c317-9ba0-4cbb-a47f-a36f9020417e
Hunt, James
2e95b3c8-734f-4ade-8010-8ed32fe4fe5e
Watt, Sebastian F.L.
8cde9189-35d1-450c-bff8-f7c9107eb635

Talling, Peter, Clare, Michael, Urlaub, Morelia, Pope, Ed, Hunt, James and Watt, Sebastian F.L. (2014) Large Submarine Landslides on Continental Slopes: Geohazards, Methane Release, and Climate Change. Oceanography, 27 (2), 32-45. (doi:10.5670/oceanog.2014.38).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Submarine landslides on open continental slopes can be prodigious in scale. They are an important process for global sediment fluxes, and can generate very damaging tsunamis. Submarine landslides are far harder to monitor directly than terrestrial landslides, and much greater uncertainty surrounds their preconditioning factors and triggers. Submarine slope failure often occurs on remarkably low (< 2°) gradients that are almost always stable on land, indicating that particularly high excess pore pressures must be involved. Earthquakes trigger some large submarine landslides, but not all major earthquakes cause widespread slope failure. The headwalls of many large submarine landslides appear to be located in water depths that are too deep for triggering by gas hydrate dissociation. The available evidence indicates that landslide occurrence is either weakly (or not) linked to changes in sea level or atmospheric methane abundance, or the available dates for open continental slope landslides are too imprecise to tell. Similarly, available evidence does not strongly support a view that landslides play an important role in methane emissions that cause climatic change. However, the largest and best-dated open continental slope landslide (the Storegga Slide) coincides with a major cooling event 8,200 years ago. This association suggests that caution may be needed when stating that there is no link between large open slope landslides and climate change.

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Published date: June 2014
Organisations: Geology & Geophysics, Marine Geoscience

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 367022
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/367022
ISSN: 1042-8275
PURE UUID: db70da1d-eca5-4df5-9a8f-39d887e3195a

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Date deposited: 17 Jul 2014 15:50
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 17:21

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Contributors

Author: Peter Talling
Author: Michael Clare
Author: Morelia Urlaub
Author: Ed Pope
Author: James Hunt
Author: Sebastian F.L. Watt

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