TY - JOUR A1 - Sanhueza-Pino, Katia A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Hetzel, Ralf A1 - Munack, Henry A1 - Weidinger, Johannes T. A1 - Dunning, Stuart A. A1 - Ormukov, Cholponbek A1 - Kubik, Peter W. T1 - Glacial advances constrained by Be-10 exposure dating of bedrock landslides, Kyrgyz Tien Shan JF - Quaternary research : an interdisciplinary journal N2 - Numerous large landslide deposits occur in the Tien Shan, a tectonically active intraplate orogen in Central Asia. Yet their significance in Quaternary landscape evolution and natural hazard assessment remains unresolved due to the lack of "absolute" age constraints. Here we present the first Be-10 exposure ages for three prominent (>10(7) m(3)) bedrock landslides that blocked major rivers and formed lakes, two of which subsequently breached, in the northern Kyrgyz Tien Shan. Three Be-10 ages reveal that one landslide in the Alamyedin River occurred at 11-15 ka, which is consistent with two C-14 ages of gastropod shells from reworked loess capping the landslide. One large landslide in Aksu River is among the oldest documented in semi-arid continental interiors, with a Be-10 age of 63-67 ka. The Ukok River landslide deposit(s) yielded variable Be-10 ages, which may result from multiple landslides, and inheritance of Be-10. Two Be-10 ages of 8.2 and 5.9 ka suggest that one major landslide occurred in the early to mid-Holocene, followed by at least one other event between 1.5 and 0.4 ka. Judging from the regional glacial chronology, all three landslides have occurred between major regional glacial advances. Whereas Alamyedin and Ukok can be considered as postglacial in this context, Aksu is of interglacial age. None of the landslide deposits show traces of glacial erosion, hence their locations and I Be ages mark maximum extents and minimum ages of glacial advances, respectively. Using toe-to-headwall altitude ratios of 0.4-0.5, we reconstruct minimum equilibrium-line altitudes that exceed previous estimates by as much as 400 m along the moister northern fringe of the Tien Shan. Our data show that deposits from large landslides can provide valuable spatio-temporal constraints for glacial advances in landscapes where moraines and glacial deposits have low preservation potential. (C) 2011 University of Washington. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Landslide KW - Rock avalanche KW - Be-10 exposure dating KW - Quaternary glaciations KW - Tien Shan Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2011.06.013 SN - 0033-5894 VL - 76 IS - 3 SP - 295 EP - 304 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fan, Xuanmei A1 - van Westen, Cees J. A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Gorum, Tolga A1 - Xu, Qiang A1 - Dai, Fuchu A1 - Huang, Runqiu A1 - Wang, Gonghui T1 - Transient water and sediment storage of the decaying landslide dams induced by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, China JF - Geomorphology : an international journal on pure and applied geomorphology N2 - Earthquake-triggered landslide dams are potentially dangerous disrupters of water and sediment flux in mountain rivers, and capable of releasing catastrophic outburst flows to downstream areas. We analyze an inventory of 828 landslide dams in the Longmen Shan mountains, China, triggered by the M-w 7.9 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. This database is unique in that it is the largest of its kind attributable to a single regional-scale triggering event: 501 of the spatially clustered landslides fully blocked rivers, while the remainder only partially obstructed or diverted channels in steep watersheds of the hanging wall of the Yingxiu-Beichuan Fault Zone. The size distributions of the earthquake-triggered landslides, landslide dams, and associated lakes (a) can be modeled by an inverse gamma distribution; (b) show that moderate-size slope failures caused the majority of blockages; and (c) allow a detailed assessment of seismically induced river-blockage effects on regional water and sediment storage. Monte Carlo simulations based on volumetric scaling relationships for soil and bedrock failures respectively indicate that 14% (18%) of the estimated total coseismic landslide volume of 6.4 (14.6) x 10(9) m(3) was contained in landslide dams, representing only 1.4% of the >60,000 slope failures attributed to the earthquake. These dams have created storage capacity of similar to 0.6x 10(9) m(3) for incoming water and sediment. About 25% of the dams containing 2% of the total river-blocking debris volume failed one week after the earthquake; these figures had risen to 60% (similar to 20%), and >90% (>90%) within one month, and one:year, respectively, thus also emptying similar to 92% of the total potential water and sediment storage behind these, dams within one year following the earthquake. Currently only similar to 0.08 x 10(9) m(3) remain available as natural reservoirs for storing water and sediment, while similar to 0.19 x 10(9) m(3), i.e. about a third of the total river-blocking debris volume, has been eroded by rivers. Dam volume and upstream catchment area control to first order the longevity of the barriers, and bivariate domain plots are consistent with the observation that most earthquake-triggered landslide dams were ephemeral. We conclude that the river-blocking portion of coseismic slope failures disproportionately modulates the post-seismic sediment flux in the Longmen Shan on annual to decadal timescales. KW - Landslide dam KW - Earthquake KW - Magnitude and frequency KW - Sediment budget Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.05.003 SN - 0169-555X VL - 171 SP - 58 EP - 68 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Earth's portfolio of extreme sediment transport events JF - Earth science reviews : the international geological journal bridging the gap between research articles and textbooks N2 - Quantitative estimates of sediment flux and the global cycling of sediments from hillslopes to rivers, estuaries, deltas, continental shelves, and deep-sea basins have a long research tradition. In this context, extremely large and commensurately rare sediment transport events have so far eluded a systematic analysis. To start filling this knowledge gap I review some of the highest reported sediment yields in mountain rivers impacted by volcanic eruptions, earthquake- and storm-triggered landslide episodes, and catastrophic dam breaks. Extreme specific yields, defined here as those exceeding the 95th percentile of compiled data, are similar to 10(4) t km(-2) yr(-1) if averaged over 1 yr. These extreme yields vary by eight orders of magnitude, but systematically decay with reference intervals from minutes to millennia such that yields vary by three orders of magnitude for a given reference interval. Sediment delivery from natural dam breaks and pyroclastic eruptions dominate these yields for a given reference interval. Even if averaged over 10(2)-10(3) yr, the contribution of individual disturbances may remain elevated above corresponding catchment denudation rates. I further estimate rates of sediment (re-)mobilisation by individual giant terrestrial and submarine mass movements. Less than 50 postglacial submarine mass movements have involved an equivalent of similar to 10% of the contemporary annual global flux of fluvial sediment to Earth's oceans, while mobilisation rates by individual events rival the decadal-scale sediment discharge from tectonically active orogens such as Taiwan or New Zealand. Sediment flushing associated with catastrophic natural dam breaks is non-stationary and shows a distinct kink at the last glacial-interglacial transition, owing to the drainage of very large late Pleistocene ice-marginal lakes. Besides emphasising the contribution of high-magnitude and low-frequency events to the global sediment cascade, these findings stress the importance of sediment storage for fuelling rather than buffering high sediment transport rates. KW - Sediment yield KW - Erosion KW - Extreme event Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2012.02.006 SN - 0012-8252 VL - 112 IS - 3-4 SP - 115 EP - 125 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huggel, Christian A1 - Clague, John J. A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Is climate change responsible for changing landslide activity in high mountains? JF - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group N2 - Climate change, manifested by an increase in mean, minimum, and maximum temperatures and by more intense rainstorms, is becoming more evident in many regions. An important consequence of these changes may be an increase in landslides in high mountains. More research, however, is necessary to detect changes in landslide magnitude and frequency related to contemporary climate, particularly in alpine regions hosting glaciers, permafrost, and snow. These regions not only are sensitive to changes in both temperature and precipitation, but are also areas in which landslides are ubiquitous even under a stable climate. We analyze a series of catastrophic slope failures that occurred in the mountains of Europe, the Americas, and the Caucasus since the end of the 1990s. We distinguish between rock and ice avalanches, debris flows from de-glaciated areas, and landslides that involve dynamic interactions with glacial and river processes. Analysis of these events indicates several important controls on slope stability in high mountains, including: the non-linear response of firn and ice to warming; three-dimensional warming of subsurface bedrock and its relation to site geology; de-glaciation accompanied by exposure of new sediment; and combined short-term effects of precipitation and temperature. Based on several case studies, we propose that the following mechanisms can significantly alter landslide magnitude and frequency, and thus hazard, under warming conditions: (1) positive feedbacks acting on mass movement processes that after an initial climatic stimulus may evolve independently of climate change; (2) threshold behavior and tipping points in geomorphic systems; (3) storage of sediment and ice involving important lag-time effects. KW - climate change KW - landslides KW - glaciers KW - permafrost Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2223 SN - 0197-9337 VL - 37 IS - 1 SP - 77 EP - 91 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Görüm, Tolga A1 - Hayakawa, Yuichi T1 - Without power? - Landslide inventories in the face of climate change JF - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group N2 - Projected scenarios of climate change involve general predictions about the likely changes to the magnitude and frequency of landslides, particularly as a consequence of altered precipitation and temperature regimes. Whether such landslide response to contemporary or past climate change may be captured in differing scaling statistics of landslide size distributions and the erosion rates derived thereof remains debated. We test this notion with simple Monte Carlo and bootstrap simulations of statistical models commonly used to characterize empirical landslide size distributions. Our results show that significant changes to total volumes contained in such inventories may be masked by statistically indistinguishable scaling parameters, critically depending on, among others, the size of the largest of landslides recorded. Conversely, comparable model parameter values may obscure significant, i.e. more than twofold, changes to landslide occurrence, and thus inferred rates of hillslope denudation and sediment delivery to drainage networks. A time series of some of Earth's largest mass movements reveals clustering near and partly before the last glacial-interglacial transition and a distinct step-over from white noise to temporal clustering around this period. However, elucidating whether this is a distinct signal of first-order climate-change impact on slope stability or simply coincides with a transition from short-term statistical noise to long-term steady-state conditions remains an important research challenge. KW - landslide KW - climate change KW - magnitude & frequency Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2248 SN - 0197-9337 VL - 37 IS - 1 SP - 92 EP - 99 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - INPR A1 - Heimsath, Arjun M. A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Quantifying rates and processes of landscape evolution T2 - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2251 SN - 0197-9337 VL - 37 IS - 2 SP - 249 EP - 251 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Malden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Uhlmann, Manuela A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Huggel, Christian A1 - Fischer, Luzia A1 - Kargel, Jeffrey S. T1 - Supra-glacial deposition and flux of catastrophic rock-slope failure debris, south-central Alaska JF - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group N2 - 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. KW - glacier KW - landslide KW - erosion rate KW - sediment yield KW - Alaska Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.3311 SN - 0197-9337 VL - 38 IS - 7 SP - 675 EP - 682 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gorum, Tolga A1 - van Westen, Cees J. A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - van der Meijde, Mark A1 - Fan, Xuanmei A1 - van der Meer, Freek D. T1 - Complex rupture mechanism and topography control symmetry of mass-wasting pattern, 2010 Haiti earthquake JF - GEOMORPHOLOGY N2 - 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. KW - Landslide KW - Earthquake KW - Thrust fault KW - Fault rupture dynamics KW - Topography KW - Haiti Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.11.027 SN - 0169-555X VL - 184 SP - 127 EP - 138 PB - ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV CY - AMSTERDAM ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blöthe, Jan Henrik A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Millennial lag times in the Himalayan sediment routing system JF - Earth & planetary science letters N2 - 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. KW - sediment storage KW - Himalayas KW - sediment budget KW - tectonic geomorphology KW - geomorphometry Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2013.08.044 SN - 0012-821X SN - 1385-013X VL - 382 IS - 20 SP - 38 EP - 46 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffmann, Thomas A1 - Schlummer, Manuela A1 - Notebaert, Bastiaan A1 - Verstraeten, Gert A1 - Korup, Oliver T1 - Carbon burial in soil sediments from Holocene agricultural erosion, Central Europe JF - Global biogeochemical cycles N2 - 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. KW - soil organic carbon KW - human impact KW - soil erosion KW - hillslope KW - floodplain KW - deposition Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/gbc.20071 SN - 0886-6236 SN - 1944-9224 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 828 EP - 835 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Hayakawa, Yuichi A1 - Codilean, Alexandru T. A1 - Matsushi, Yuki A1 - Saito, Hitoshi A1 - Oguchi, Takashi A1 - Matsuzaki, Hiroyuki T1 - Japan's sediment flux to the Pacific Ocean revisited JF - Earth science reviews : the international geological journal bridging the gap between research articles and textbooks N2 - Quantifying volumes and rates of delivery of terrestrial sediment from island arcs to subduction zones is indispensable for refining estimates of the thickness of trench fills that may eventually control the location and timing of submarine landslides and tsunami-generating mega-earthquakes. Despite these motivating insights, knowledge about the rates of erosion and sediment export from the Japanese islands to their Pacific subduction zones remains patchy regardless of the increasing availability of highly resolved data on surface deformation, climate, geology, and topography. Traditionally, natural erosion rates across the island arc have been estimated from regression of topographic catchment metrics and reservoir sedimentation rates that were recorded over several years to decades. We review current research in this context, correct for a systematic bias in one of the most widely used predictions, and present new estimates of decadal to millennial-scale erosion rates of Japan's terrestrial inner forearc. We draw on several independent and unprecedented inventories of mass wasting, reservoir sedimentation, and concentrations of cosmogenic Be-10 in river sands. We find that natural Be-10-derived denudation rates of several mm yr(-1) in the Japanese Alps have been sustained over several centuries to millennia, and are, within error, roughly consistent with sediment yields inferred from artificial reservoir sedimentation. Local exceptions may likely result from release of sediment storage or regional landsliding episodes that trigger transient sediment pulses. Our synopsis further reveals that catchments draining Japan's eastern seaboard differ distinctly in their tectonic, lithological, topographic, and climatic characteristics between the Tohoku, Japanese Alps, and Nankai inner forearc segments, which is underscored by a marked asymmetric pattern of erosion rates along the island arc. Erosion rates are highest (up to at least 3 mm yr(-1)) in the Japanese Alps that mark the collision of two subduction zones, where high topographic relief, hillslope and bedrock-channel steepness foster rapid denudation by mass wasting. Comparable, if slightly lower, erosion rates characterise the Nankai inner forearc in southwest Japan, most likely due to higher typhoon-driven rainfall totals and variability rather than its high topographic relief. In contrast, our estimated erosion and flux rates are lowest in the Tohoku inner forearc catchments that feed sediment into the Japan Trench. We conclude that collisional mountain building of the Japanese Alps drives some of the highest erosion rates in the island arc despite similar uplift and precipitation controls in southwest Japan. We infer that, prior to extensive river damming, reservoir construction, and coastal works, the gross of Japan's total sediment export to the Pacific Ocean entered the accretionary margin of the Nankai Trough as opposed to the comparatively sediment-starved Japan Trench. Compared to documented contemporary rates of sediment flux from mountainous catchments elsewhere in the Pacific, the rivers draining Japan's inner forearc take an intermediate position despite high relief, steep slopes, very high seismicity, and frequent rainstorms. However, the average rates of millennial-scale denudation in the Japanese Alps particularly are amongst the highest reported worldwide. Local mismatches between these late Holocene and modern rates emphasise the anthropogenic fingerprint on sediment retention that may have significantly reduced the island arc's mass flux to its subduction zones, as is the case elsewhere in east and southeast Asia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Erosion KW - Japan KW - Subduction zone KW - Landslides KW - Cosmogenic nuclides KW - Sediment budget Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2014.03.004 SN - 0012-8252 SN - 1872-6828 VL - 135 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bloethe, Jan H. A1 - Munack, Henry A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Fuelling, Alexander A1 - Garzanti, Eduardo A1 - Resentini, Alberto A1 - Kubik, Peter W. T1 - Late Quaternary valley infill and dissection in the Indus River, western Tibetan Plateau margin JF - Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal N2 - The Indus, one of Earth's major rivers, drains large parts of the NW Himalaya and the Transhimalayan ranges that form part of the western Tibetan Plateau margin. In the western Himalayan syntaxis, where local topographic relief exceeds 7 km, the Indus has incised a steep bedrock gorge at rates of several mm yr(-1). Upstream, however, the upper Indus and its tributaries alternate between bedrock gorges and broad alluvial flats flanked by the Ladakh and Zanskar ranges. We review the late Quaternary valley history in this region with a focus on the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar Rivers, where vast alluvial terrace staircases and lake sediments record major episodes of aggradation and incision. New absolute dating of high-level fluvial terrace remnants using cosmogenic Be-10, optically and infrared stimulated luminescence (OSL, IRSL) indicates at least two phases of late Quaternary valley infilling. These phases commenced before similar to 200 ka and similar to 50-20 ka, judging from terrace treads stranded >150 m and similar to 30-40 m above modern river levels, respectively. Numerous stacks of lacustrine sediments that straddle the Indus River >200 km between the city of Leh and the confluence with the Shyok River share a distinct horizontal alignment. Constraints from IRSL samples of lacustrine sequences from the Leh-Spituk area reveal a protracted lake phase from >177 ka to 72 ka, locally accumulating >50-m thick deposits. In the absence of tectonic faulting, major lithological differences, and stream capture, we attribute the formation of this and other large lakes in the region to natural damming by large landslides, glaciers, and alluvial fans. The overall patchy landform age constraints from earlier studies can be reconciled by postulating a major deglacial control on sediment flux, valley infilling, and subsequent incision that has been modulated locally by backwater effects of natural damming. While comparison with Pleistocene monsoon proxies reveals no obvious correlation, a lateor post-glacial sediment pulse seems a more likely source of this widespread sedimentation that has partly buried the dissected bedrock topography. Overall, the long residence times of fluvial, alluvial and lacustrine deposits in the region (>500 ka) support previous studies, but remain striking given the dominantly steep slopes and deeply carved valleys that characterise this high-altitude mountain desert. Recalculated late Quaternary rates of fluvial bedrock incision in the Indus and Zanskar of 1.5 +/- 0.2 mm yr(-1) are at odds with the longevity of juxtaposed valley-fill deposits, unless a lack of decisive lateral fluvial erosion helps to preserve these late Pleistocene sedimentary archives. We conclude that alternating, similar to 10(4)-yr long, phases of massive infilling and incision have dominated the late Quaternary history of the Indus valley below the western Tibetan Plateau margin. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Himalaya KW - Indus KW - Valley fills KW - Glaciation KW - Erosion KW - Lake sediment Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.04.011 SN - 0277-3791 VL - 94 SP - 102 EP - 119 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gorum, Tolga A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - van Westen, Cees J. A1 - van der Meijde, Mark A1 - Xu, Chong A1 - van der Meer, Freek D. T1 - Why so few? Landslides triggered by the 2002 Denali earthquake, Alaska JF - Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal N2 - The 2002 M-w 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake, Alaska, provides an unparalleled opportunity to investigate in quantitative detail the regional hillslope mass-wasting response to strong seismic shaking in glacierized terrain. We present the first detailed inventory of similar to 1580 coseismic slope failures, out of which some 20% occurred above large valley glaciers, based on mapping from multi-temporal remote sensing data. We find that the Denali earthquake produced at least one order of magnitude fewer landslides in a much narrower corridor along the fault ruptures than empirical predictions for an M 8 earthquake would suggest, despite the availability of sufficiently steep and dissected mountainous topography prone to frequent slope failure. In order to explore potential controls on the reduced extent of regional coseismic landsliding we compare our data with inventories that we compiled for two recent earthquakes in periglacial and formerly glaciated terrain, i.e. at Yushu, Tibet (M-w 6.9, 2010), and Aysen Fjord, Chile (2007 M-w 6.2). Fault movement during these events was, similarly to that of the Denali earthquake, dominated by strike-slip offsets along near-vertical faults. Our comparison returns very similar coseismic landslide patterns that are consistent with the idea that fault type, geometry, and dynamic rupture process rather than widespread glacier cover were among the first-order controls on regional hillslope erosional response in these earthquakes. We conclude that estimating the amount of coseismic hillslope sediment input to the sediment cascade from earthquake magnitude alone remains highly problematic, particularly if glacierized terrain is involved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Earthquake KW - Landslide KW - Glacial KW - Sediment cascade KW - Denali KW - Alaska Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.04.032 SN - 0277-3791 VL - 95 SP - 80 EP - 94 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Saito, H. A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Uchida, T. A1 - Hayashi, S. A1 - Oguchi, T. T1 - Rainfall conditions, typhoon frequency, and contemporary landslide erosion in Japan JF - Geology N2 - Dealing with predicted increases in extreme weather conditions due to climate change requires robust knowledge about controls on rainfall-triggered landslides. We explore relationships between rainfall and landslide size throughout the Japanese archipelago. We test whether the total volume of landslides can be predicted directly from rainfall totals, intensity, and duration using a nationwide inventory of 4744 rainfall-triggered landslides recorded from A.D. 2001 to 2011. We find that larger landslides were more abundant at the expense of smaller ones when total, maximum, and mean rainfall intensity exceeded similar to 250 mm, similar to 35 mm/h, and similar to 4 mm/h, respectively. Frequency distributions of these rainfall parameters are peaked and heavily skewed. Yet neither the most frequent nor the most extreme values of these rainfall metrics coincide consistently with the maximum landslide volumes. A striking decrease of landslide volumes at both mean and maximum rainfall intensity, as well as duration, points to an exhaustion in hillslope geomorphic response regardless of sample size, landslide type, mobilized volume, dominant lithology, or reporting bias. Our results underscore substantial offsets between the peaks of rainfall metrics and maximum associated landslide volumes, thus complicating straightforward estimates of geomorphic work from metrics of rainstorm magnitude or frequency. Only the rainfall total appears to be a suitable monotonic predictor of landslide volumes mobilized during typhoons and frontal storms. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1130/G35680.1 SN - 0091-7613 SN - 1943-2682 VL - 42 IS - 11 SP - 999 EP - 1002 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Boulder ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidinger, Johannes T. A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Munack, Henry A1 - Altenberger, Uwe A1 - Dunning, Stuart A. A1 - Tippelt, Gerold A1 - Lottermoser, Werner T1 - Giant rockslides from the inside JF - Earth & planetary science letters N2 - The growing body of research on large-scale mass wasting events so far has only scarcely investigated the sedimentology of chaotic deposits from non-volcanic terrestrial landslides such that any overarching and systematic terminological framework remains elusive. Yet recent work has emphasized the need for better understanding the internal structure and composition of rockslide deposits as a means to characterise the mechanics during the final stages of runout and emplacement. We offer a comprehensive overview on the occurrence of rock fragmentation and frictional melt both at different geographic locations, and different sections within large (>10(6) m(3)) rockslide masses. We argue that exposures of pervasively fragmented and interlocked jigsaw-cracked rock masses; basal melange containing rip-up clasts and phantom blocks; micro-breccia; and thin bands of basal frictionite are indispensable clues for identifying deposits from giant rockslides that may remain morphologically inconspicuous otherwise. These sedimentary assemblages are diagnostic tools for distinguishing large rockslide debris from macro and microscopically similar glacial deposits, tectonic fault-zone breccias, and impact breccias, and thus help avoid palaeoclimatic and tectonic misinterpretations, let alone misestimates of the hazard from giant rockslides. Moreover, experimental results from Mossbauer spectroscopy of frictionite samples support visual interpretations of thin sections, and demonstrate that short-lived (<10 s) friction-induced partial melting at temperatures >1500 degrees C in the absence of water occurred at the base of several giant moving rockslides. This finding supports previous theories of dry excess runout accompanied by comminution of rock masses down to gm-scale, and indicates that catastrophic motion of large fragmenting rock masses does not require water as a potential lubricant. KW - landslide KW - petrography KW - frictional melt KW - pseudotachylyte KW - breccia KW - Mossbauer spectroscopy Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2013.12.017 SN - 0012-821X SN - 1385-013X VL - 389 SP - 62 EP - 73 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meyer, Nele Kristin A1 - Schwanghart, Wolfgang A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Romstad, Bard A1 - Etzelmuller, Bernd T1 - Estimating the topographic predictability of debris flows JF - Geomorphology : an international journal on pure and applied geomorphology N2 - The Norwegian traffic network is impacted by about 2000 landslides, avalanches, and debris flows each year that incur high economic losses. Despite the urgent need to mitigate future losses, efforts to locate potential debris flow source areas have been rare at the regional scale. We tackle this research gap by exploring a minimal set of possible topographic predictors of debris flow initiation that we input to a Weights-of-Evidence (WofE) model for mapping the regional susceptibility to debris flows in western Norway. We use an inventory of 429 debris flows that were recorded between 1979 and 2008, and use the terrain variables of slope, total curvature, and contributing area (flow accumulation) to compute the posterior probabilities of local debris flow occurrence. The novelty of our approach is that we quantify the uncertainties in the WofE approach arising from different predictor classification schemes and data input, while estimating model accuracy and predictive performance from independent test data. Our results show that a percentile-based classification scheme excels over a manual classification of the predictor variables because differing abundances in manually defined bins reduce the reliability of the conditional independence tests, a key, and often neglected, prerequisite for the WofE method. The conditional dependence between total curvature and flow accumulation precludes their joint use in the model. Slope gradient has the highest true positive rate (88%), although the fraction of area classified as susceptible is very large (37%). The predictive performance, i.e. the reduction of false positives, is improved when combined with either total curvature or flow accumulation. Bootstrapping shows that the combination of slope and flow accumulation provides more reliable predictions than the combination of slope and total curvature, and helps refining the use of slope-area plots for identifying morphometric fingerprints of debris flow source areas, an approach used outside the field of landslide susceptibility assessments. KW - Weights-of-Evidence KW - Debris flows KW - Susceptibility KW - Slope-area plot KW - Process domains KW - Norway Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.10.030 SN - 0169-555X SN - 1872-695X VL - 207 SP - 114 EP - 125 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wang, Yongbo A1 - Herzschuh, Ulrike A1 - Liu, Xingqi A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Diekmann, Bernhard T1 - A high-resolution sedimentary archive from landslide-dammed Lake Mengda, north-eastern Tibetan Plateau JF - Journal of paleolimnolog N2 - Lacustrine sediments have been widely used to investigate past climatic and environmental changes on millennial to seasonal time scales. Sedimentary archives of lakes in mountainous regions may also record non-climatic events such as earthquakes. We argue herein that a set of 64 annual laminae couplets reconciles a stratigraphically inconsistent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) C-14 chronology in a similar to 4-m-long sediment core from Lake Mengda, in the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. The laminations suggest the lake was formed by a large landslide, triggered by the 1927 Gulang earthquake (M = 8.0). The lake sediment sequence can be separated into three units based on lithologic, sedimentary, and isotopic characteristics. Starting from the bottom of the sequence, these are: (1) unweathered, coarse, sandy valley-floor deposits or landslide debris that pre-date the lake, (2) landslide-induced, fine-grained soil or reworked landslide debris with a high organic content, and (3) lacustrine sediments with low organic content and laminations. These annual laminations provide a high-resolution record of anthropogenic and environmental changes during the twentieth century, recording enhanced sediment input associated with two phases of construction activities. The high mean sedimentation rates of up to 4.8 mm year(-1) underscore the potential for reconstructing such distinct sediment pulses in remote, forested, and seemingly undisturbed mountain catchments. KW - Earthquake KW - Landslide KW - Natural dam KW - Tibetan Plateau Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-012-9666-6 SN - 0921-2728 SN - 1573-0417 VL - 51 IS - 2 SP - 303 EP - 312 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Rixen, C. T1 - Soil erosion and organic carbon export by wet snow avalanches JF - The Cryosphere : TC ; an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union N2 - Many mountain belts sustain prolonged snow cover for parts of the year, although enquiries into rates of erosion in these landscapes have focused almost exclusively on the snow-free periods. This raises the question of whether annual snow cover contributes significantly to modulating rates of erosion in high-relief terrain. In this context, the sudden release of snow avalanches is a frequent and potentially relevant process, judging from the physical damage to subalpine forest ecosystems, and the amount of debris contained in avalanche deposits. To quantitatively constrain this visual impression and to expand the sparse literature, we sampled sediment concentrations of n = 28 river-spanning snow-avalanche deposits (snow bridges) in the area around Davos, eastern Swiss Alps, and inferred an orders-of-magnitude variability in specific fine sediment and organic carbon yields (1.8 to 830 t km(-2) yr(-1), and 0.04 to 131 tC km(-2) yr(-1), respectively). A Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates that, with a minimum of free parameters, such variability is inherent to the geometric scaling used for computing specific yields. Moreover, the widely applied method of linearly extrapolating plot scale sample data may be prone to substantial under- or overestimates. A comparison of our inferred yields with previously published work demonstrates the relevance of wet snow avalanches as prominent agents of soil erosion and transporters of biogeochemical constituents to mountain rivers. Given that a number of snow bridges persisted below the insulating debris cover well into the summer months, snow-avalanche deposits also contribute to regulating in-channel sediment and organic debris storage on seasonal timescales. Finally, our results underline the potential shortcomings of neglecting erosional processes in the winter and spring months in mountainous terrain subjected to prominent snow cover. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-651-2014 SN - 1994-0416 SN - 1994-0424 VL - 8 IS - 2 SP - 651 EP - 658 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Kristin A1 - Riggelsen, Carsten A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Scherbaum, Frank T1 - Bayesian network learning for natural hazard analyses JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - Modern natural hazards research requires dealing with several uncertainties that arise from limited process knowledge, measurement errors, censored and incomplete observations, and the intrinsic randomness of the governing processes. Nevertheless, deterministic analyses are still widely used in quantitative hazard assessments despite the pitfall of misestimating the hazard and any ensuing risks. In this paper we show that Bayesian networks offer a flexible framework for capturing and expressing a broad range of uncertainties encountered in natural hazard assessments. Although Bayesian networks are well studied in theory, their application to real-world data is far from straightforward, and requires specific tailoring and adaptation of existing algorithms. We offer suggestions as how to tackle frequently arising problems in this context and mainly concentrate on the handling of continuous variables, incomplete data sets, and the interaction of both. By way of three case studies from earthquake, flood, and landslide research, we demonstrate the method of data-driven Bayesian network learning, and showcase the flexibility, applicability, and benefits of this approach. Our results offer fresh and partly counterintuitive insights into well-studied multivariate problems of earthquake-induced ground motion prediction, accurate flood damage quantification, and spatially explicit landslide prediction at the regional scale. In particular, we highlight how Bayesian networks help to express information flow and independence assumptions between candidate predictors. Such knowledge is pivotal in providing scientists and decision makers with well-informed strategies for selecting adequate predictor variables for quantitative natural hazard assessments. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-14-2605-2014 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 14 IS - 9 SP - 2605 EP - 2626 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munack, Henry A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Resentini, Alberto A1 - Limonta, Mara A1 - Garzanti, Eduardo A1 - Bloethe, Jan H. A1 - Scherler, Dirk A1 - Wittmann, Hella A1 - Kubik, Peter W. T1 - Postglacial denudation of western Tibetan Plateau margin outpaced by long-term exhumation JF - Geological Society of America bulletin N2 - The Indus River, one of Asia's premier rivers, drains the western Tibetan Plateau and the Nanga Parbat syntaxis. These two areas juxtapose some of the lowest and highest topographic relief and commensurate denudation rates in the Himalaya-Tibet orogen, respectively, yet the spatial pattern of denudation rates upstream of the syntaxis remains largely unclear, as does the way in which major rivers drive headward incision into the Tibetan Plateau. We report a new inventory of Be-10-based basinwide denudation rates from 33 tributaries flanking the Indus River along a 320 km reach across the western Tibetan Plateau margin. We find that denudation rates of up to 110 mm k.y.(-1) in the Ladakh and Zanskar Ranges systematically decrease eastward to 10 mm k.y.(-1) toward the Tibetan Plateau. Independent results from bulk petrographic and heavy mineral analyses support this denudation gradient. Assuming that incision along the Indus exerts the base-level control on tributary denudation rates, our data show a systematic eastward decrease of landscape downwearing, reaching its minimum on the Tibetan Plateau. In contrast, denudation rates increase rapidly 150-200 km downstream of a distinct knick-point that marks the Tibetan Plateau margin in the Indus River longitudinal profile. We infer that any vigorous headward incision and any accompanying erosional waves into the interior of the plateau mostly concerned reaches well below this plateau margin. Moreover, reported long-term (>10(6) yr) exhumation rates from low-temperature chronometry of 0.1-0.75 mm yr(-1) consistently exceed our Be-10-derived denudation rates. With averaging time scales of 10(3)-10(4) yr for our denudation data, we report postglacial rates of downwearing in a tectonically idle landscape. To counterbalance this apparent mismatch, denudation rates must have been higher in the Quaternary during glacial-interglacial intervals. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1130/B30979.1 SN - 0016-7606 SN - 1943-2674 VL - 126 IS - 11-12 SP - 1580 EP - 1594 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Boulder ER -