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Undrained Sediment Loading Key to Long-Runout Submarine Mass Movements: Evidence from the Caribbean Volcanic Arc

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Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences

Part of the book series: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research ((NTHR,volume 31))

Abstract

Long undersea debris runout can be facilitated by a boundary layer formed by weak marine sediments under a moving slide mass. Undrained loading of such offshore sediment results in a profound drop of basal shear resistance, compared to subaerial shear resistance, enabling long undersea runout. Thus large long-runout submarine landslides are not truly enigmatic (Voight and Elsworth 1992, 1997), but are understandable in terms of conventional geotechnical principles. A corollary is that remoulded undrained strength, and not friction angle, should be used for basal resistance in numerical simulations. This hypothesis is testable via drilling and examining the structure at the soles of undersea debris avalanches for indications of incorporation of sheared marine sediments, by tests of soil properties, and by simulations. Such considerations of emplacement process are an aim of ongoing research in the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean Sea), where multiple offshore debris avalanche and dome-collapse debris deposits have been identified since 1999 on swath bathymetric surveys collected in five oceanographic cruises. This paper reviews the prehistoric and historic collapses that have occurred offshore of Antilles arc islands and summarizes ongoing research on emplacement processes.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Prof. N. Oyagi and S. R. Young for reviews. The study was supported by NSF in the US and by IPGP, CNRS and IFREMER in France. We thank captains, crews and the participating scientists of the different cruises.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geosciences, Penn State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Barry Voight

  2. Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 1 rue Jussieu, 75238, Paris Cedex 05, France

    Anne Le Friant, Georges Boudon, Christine Deplus, Jean-Christophe Komorowski & Elodie Lebas

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TH, UK

    R. Stephen J. Sparks

  4. National Oceanography Centre, European Way, Southampton, SO14 3ZH, UK

    Peter Talling & Jess Trofimovs

Authors
  1. Barry Voight
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  2. Anne Le Friant
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  3. Georges Boudon
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  4. Christine Deplus
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  5. Jean-Christophe Komorowski
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  6. Elodie Lebas
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  7. R. Stephen J. Sparks
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  8. Peter Talling
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  9. Jess Trofimovs
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barry Voight .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Earth Resources Engineerin, Kyoto University, Katsura, Nishikyo, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan

    Yasuhiro Yamada

  2. Fukada Geological Institute, 2-13-12 Honkomagome, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-0021, Japan

    Kiichiro Kawamura

  3. Geological Survey of Japan, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8567, Japan

    Ken Ikehara

  4. University of Tsukuba, Yokodai 1-127-2-C-740, Tsukubamirai, 300-2358, Japan

    Yujiro Ogawa

  5. Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37-49, Barcelona, 08003, Spain

    Roger Urgeles

  6. Natural Resources Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Geological Survey of Canada, Challenge Dr. 1, Dartmouth, B2Y 4A2, Canada

    David Mosher

  7. Woods Hole Science Center, United States Geological Survey, Woods Hole Road 384, Woods Hole, 02543, Massachusetts, USA

    Jason Chaytor

  8. , Geological Institute, ETH Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 5, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland

    Michael Strasser

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Voight, B. et al. (2012). Undrained Sediment Loading Key to Long-Runout Submarine Mass Movements: Evidence from the Caribbean Volcanic Arc. In: Yamada, Y., et al. Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2162-3_37

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