@article{GorumvanWestenKorupetal.2013, author = {Gorum, Tolga and van Westen, Cees J. and Korup, Oliver and van der Meijde, Mark and Fan, Xuanmei and van der Meer, Freek D.}, title = {Complex rupture mechanism and topography control symmetry of mass-wasting pattern, 2010 Haiti earthquake}, series = {GEOMORPHOLOGY}, volume = {184}, journal = {GEOMORPHOLOGY}, publisher = {ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV}, address = {AMSTERDAM}, issn = {0169-555X}, doi = {10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.11.027}, pages = {127 -- 138}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The 12 January 2010 M-w 7.0 Haiti earthquake occurred in a complex deformation zone at the boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. Combined geodetic, geological and seismological data posited that surface deformation was driven by rupture on the Leogane blind thrust fault, while part of the rupture occurred as deep lateral slip on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault (EPGF). The earthquake triggered >4490 landslides, mainly shallow, disrupted rock falls, debris-soil falls and slides, and a few lateral spreads, over an area of similar to 2150 km(2). The regional distribution of these slope failures defies those of most similar earthquake-triggered landslide episodes reported previously. Most of the coseismic landslides did not proliferate in the hanging wall of the main rupture, but clustered instead at the junction of the blind Leogane and EPGF ruptures, where topographic relief and hillslope steepness are above average. Also, low-relief areas subjected to high coseismic uplift were prone to lesser hanging wall slope instability than previous studies would suggest. We argue that a combined effect of complex rupture dynamics and topography primarily control this previously rarely documented landslide pattern. Compared to recent thrust fault-earthquakes of similar magnitudes elsewhere, we conclude that lower static stress drop, mean fault displacement, and blind ruptures of the 2010 Haiti earthquake resulted in fewer, smaller, and more symmetrically distributed landslides than previous studies would suggest. Our findings caution against overly relying on across-the-board models of slope stability response to seismic ground shaking. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{UhlmannKorupHuggeletal.2013, author = {Uhlmann, Manuela and Korup, Oliver and Huggel, Christian and Fischer, Luzia and Kargel, Jeffrey S.}, title = {Supra-glacial deposition and flux of catastrophic rock-slope failure debris, south-central Alaska}, series = {Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group}, volume = {38}, journal = {Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group}, number = {7}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0197-9337}, doi = {10.1002/esp.3311}, pages = {675 -- 682}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The ongoing debate over the effects of global environmental change on Earth's cryosphere calls for detailed knowledge about process rates and their variability in cold environments. In this context, appraisals of the coupling between glacier dynamics and para-glacial erosion rates in tectonically active mountains remain rare. We contribute to filling this knowledge gap and present an unprecedented regional-scale inventory of supra-glacial sediment flux and hillslope erosion rates inferred from an analysis of 123 large (> 0 center dot 1km2) catastrophic bedrock landslides that fell onto glaciers in the Chugach Mountains, Alaska, as documented by satellite images obtained between 1972 to 2008. Assuming these supra-glacial landslide deposits to be passive strain markers we infer minimum decadal-scale sediment yields of 190 to 7400tkm-2yr-1 for a given glacier-surface cross-section impacted by episodic rock-slope failure. These rates compare to reported fluvial sediment yields in many mountain rivers, but are an order of magnitude below the extreme sediment yields measured at the snouts of Alaskan glaciers, indicating that the bulk of debris discharged derives from en-glacial, sub-glacial or ice-proximal sources. We estimate an average minimum para-glacial erosion rate by large, episodic rock-slope failures at 0 center dot 5-0 center dot 7mmyr-1 in the Chugach Mountains over a 50-yr period, with earthquakes likely being responsible for up to 73\% of this rate. Though ranking amongst the highest decadal landslide erosion rates for this size of study area worldwide, our inferred rates of hillslope erosion in the Chugach Mountains remain an order of magnitude below the pace of extremely rapid glacial sediment export and glacio-isostatic surface uplift previously reported from the region.}, language = {en} } @article{HoffmannSchlummerNotebaertetal.2013, author = {Hoffmann, Thomas and Schlummer, Manuela and Notebaert, Bastiaan and Verstraeten, Gert and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Carbon burial in soil sediments from Holocene agricultural erosion, Central Europe}, series = {Global biogeochemical cycles}, volume = {27}, journal = {Global biogeochemical cycles}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Geophysical Union}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0886-6236}, doi = {10.1002/gbc.20071}, pages = {828 -- 835}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Natural and human-induced erosion supplies high amounts of soil organic carbon (OC) to terrestrial drainage networks. Yet OC fluxes in rivers were considered in global budgets only recently. Modern estimates of annual carbon burial in inland river sediments of 0.6 Gt C, or 22\% of C transferred from terrestrial ecosystems to river channels, consider only lakes and reservoirs and disregard any long-term carbon burial in hillslope or floodplain sediments. Here we present the first assessment of sediment-bound OC storage in Central Europe from a synthesis of similar to 1500 Holocene hillslope and floodplain sedimentary archives. We show that sediment storage increases with drainage-basin size due to more extensive floodplains in larger river basins. However, hillslopes retain hitherto unrecognized high amounts of eroded soils at the scale of large river basins such that average agricultural erosion rates during the Holocene would have been at least twice as high as reported previously. This anthropogenic hillslope sediment storage exceeds floodplain storage in drainage basins <10(5) km(2), challenging the notion that floodplains are the dominant sedimentary sinks. In terms of carbon burial, OC concentrations in floodplains exceed those on hillslopes, and net OC accumulation rates in floodplains (0.70.2 g C m(-2)a(-1)) surpass those on hillslopes (0.40.1 g C m(-2)a(-1)) over the last 7500 years. We conclude that carbon burial in floodplains and on hillslopes in Central Europe exceeds terrestrial carbon storage in lakes and reservoirs by at least 2 orders of magnitude and should thus be considered in continental carbon budgets.}, language = {en} } @article{BloetheKorup2013, author = {Bl{\"o}the, Jan Henrik and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Millennial lag times in the Himalayan sediment routing system}, series = {Earth \& planetary science letters}, volume = {382}, journal = {Earth \& planetary science letters}, number = {20}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0012-821X}, doi = {10.1016/j.epsl.2013.08.044}, pages = {38 -- 46}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Any understanding of sediment routing from mountain belts to their forelands and offshore sinks remains incomplete without estimates of intermediate storage that decisively buffers sediment yields from erosion rates, attenuates water and sediment fluxes, and protects underlying bedrock from incision. We quantify for the first time the sediment stored in > 38000 mainly postglacial Himalayan valley fills, based on an empirical volume-area scaling of valley-fill outlines automatically extracted from digital topographic data. The estimated total volume of 690(+452/-242) km(3) is mostly contained in few large valley fills > 1 km(3), while catastrophic mass wasting adds another 177(31) km(3). Sediment storage volumes are highly disparate along the strike of the orogen. Much of the Himalaya's stock of sediment is sequestered in glacially scoured valleys that provide accommodation space for similar to 44\% of the total volume upstream of the rapidly exhuming and incising syntaxes. Conversely, the step-like long-wave topography of the central Himalayas limits glacier extent, and thus any significant glacier-derived storage of sediment away from tectonic basins. We show that exclusive removal of Himalayan valley fills could nourish contemporary sediment flux from the Indus and Brahmaputra basins for > 1 kyr, though individual fills may attain residence times of > 100 kyr. These millennial lag times in the Himalayan sediment routing system may sufficiently buffer signals of short-term seismic as well as climatic disturbances, thus complicating simple correlation and interpretation of sedimentary archives from the Himalayan orogen, its foreland, and its submarine fan systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} }