Coseismic landslides

What can landslides tell us about past fault activity? Landslides (including deep-seated slope failures, sackung, and shallower slips) can record strong-ground motions and, in some cases, stresses associated with fault motion during the earthquake cycle. By learning about how landslides have ‘moved’ in modern earthquakes for which we have detailed geodetic, seismological and field observations, we can better interpret the paleoseismic record of landslides in the landscape. One such study was Stahl et al., 2014: “Coseismic landsliding during the 2010 Mw 7.1 Darfield (Canterbury) earthquake: implications for paleoseismic studies of landslides“.

I am particularly interested in the grey area between sackung (or antislope scarps) and tectonic normal faults. For landslides that fail on or near earthquake source faults, I’d like to know how fault kinematics and folding affect the nature and occurrence of landslides. A good example was “Preliminary Geometry, Displacement, and Kinematics of Fault Ruptures in the Epicentral Region of the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikōura, New Zealand, Earthquake” (and the photo above!). I am also interested in measuring how rivers export sediment from coseismic landslides using cosmogenic nuclides.