TY - JOUR A1 - Illien, Luc A1 - Sens-Schönfelder, Christoph A1 - Andermann, Christoff A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Cook, Kristen L. A1 - Adhikari, Lok Bijaya A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Seismic velocity recovery in the subsurface BT - transient damage and groundwater drainage following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, Nepal JF - Journal of geophysical research : Solid earth N2 - Shallow earthquakes frequently disturb the hydrological and mechanical state of the subsurface, with consequences for hazard and water management. Transient post-seismic hydrological behavior has been widely reported, suggesting that the recovery of material properties (relaxation) following ground shaking may impact groundwater fluctuations. However, the monitoring of seismic velocity variations associated with earthquake damage and hydrological variations are often done assuming that both effects are independent. In a field site prone to highly variable hydrological conditions, we disentangle the different forcing of the relative seismic velocity variations delta v retrieved from a small dense seismic array in Nepal in the aftermath of the 2015 M-w 7.8 Gorkha earthquake. We successfully model transient damage effects by introducing a universal relaxation function that contains a unique maximum relaxation timescale for the main shock and the aftershocks, independent of the ground shaking levels. Next, we remove the modeled velocity from the raw data and test whether the corresponding residuals agree with a background hydrological behavior we inferred from a previously calibrated groundwater model. The fitting of the delta v data with this model is improved when we introduce transient hydrological properties in the phase immediately following the main shock. This transient behavior, interpreted as an enhanced permeability in the shallow subsurface, lasts for similar to 6 months and is shorter than the damage relaxation (similar to 1 yr). Thus, we demonstrate the capability of seismic interferometry to deconvolve transient hydrological properties after earthquakes from non-linear mechanical recovery. KW - earthquake damage KW - earthquake hydrology KW - relaxation KW - Gorkha earthquake KW - seismic monitoring KW - ambient noise Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JB023402 SN - 2169-9313 SN - 2169-9356 VL - 127 IS - 2 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brunello, Camilla Francesca A1 - Andermann, Christoff A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Schneider, Katharina A. A1 - Comiti, Francesco A1 - Achleitner, Stefan A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Annually resolved monsoon onset and withdrawal dates across the Himalayas derived from local precipitation statistics JF - Geophysical research letters N2 - A local and flexible definition of the monsoon season based on hydrological evidence is important for the understanding and management of Himalayan water resources. Here, we present an objective statistical method to retrieve seasonal hydrometeorological transitions. Applied to daily rainfall data (1951-2015), this method shows an average longitudinal delay of similar to 15 days, with later monsoon onset and earlier withdrawal in the western Himalaya, consistent with the continental progression of wet air masses. This delay leads to seasons of different length along the Himalaya and biased precipitation amounts when using uniform calendric monsoon boundaries. In the Central Himalaya annual precipitation has increased, due primarily to an increase of premonsoon precipitation. These findings highlight issues associated with a static definition of monsoon boundaries and call for a deeper understanding of nonmonsoonal precipitation over the Himalayan water tower.
Plain Language Summary Precipitation in the Himalayas determines water availability for the Indian foreland with large socioeconomic implications. Despite its importance, spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation are poorly understood. Here, we estimate the long-term average and trends of seasonal precipitation at the scale of individual catchments draining the Himalayas. We apply a statistical method to detect the timing of hydrometeorological seasons from local precipitation measurements, focusing on monsoon onset and withdrawal. We identify longitudinal and latitudinal delays, resulting in seasons of different length along and across the Himalayas. These spatial patterns and the annual variability of the monsoon boundaries mean that oft-used, fixed calendric dates, for example, 1 June to 30 September, may be inadequate for retrieving monsoon rainfall totals. Moreover, we find that, despite its prominent contribution to annual rainfall totals, the Indian summer monsoon cannot explain the increase of the annual precipitation over the Central Himalayas. Instead, this appears to be mostly driven by changes in premonsoon and winter rainfall. So far, little attention has been paid to premonsoon precipitation, but governed by evaporative processes and surface water availability, it may be enhanced by irrigation and changed land use in the Gangetic foreland. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088420 SN - 0094-8276 SN - 1944-8007 VL - 47 IS - 23 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Behling, Robert A1 - Andermann, Christoff A1 - Turowski, Jens M. A1 - Illien, Luc A1 - Roessner, Sigrid A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Long-term erosion of the Nepal Himalayas by bedrock landsliding BT - the role of monsoons, earthquakes and giant landslides JF - Earth surface dynamics N2 - In active mountain belts with steep terrain, bedrock landsliding is a major erosional agent. In the Himalayas, landsliding is driven by annual hydro-meteorological forcing due to the summer monsoon and by rarer, exceptional events, such as earthquakes. Independent methods yield erosion rate estimates that appear to increase with sampling time, suggesting that rare, high-magnitude erosion events dominate the erosional budget. Nevertheless, until now, neither the contribution of monsoon and earthquakes to landslide erosion nor the proportion of erosion due to rare, giant landslides have been quantified in the Himalayas. We address these challenges by combining and analysing earthquake- and monsoon-induced landslide inventories across different timescales. With time series of 5 m satellite images over four main valleys in central Nepal, we comprehensively mapped landslides caused by the monsoon from 2010 to 2018. We found no clear correlation between monsoon properties and landsliding and a similar mean landsliding rate for all valleys, except in 2015, where the valleys affected by the earthquake featured similar to 5-8 times more landsliding than the pre-earthquake mean rate. The longterm size-frequency distribution of monsoon-induced landsliding (MIL) was derived from these inventories and from an inventory of landslides larger than similar to 0.1 km(2) that occurred between 1972 and 2014. Using a published landslide inventory for the Gorkha 2015 earthquake, we derive the size-frequency distribution for earthquakeinduced landsliding (EQIL). These two distributions are dominated by infrequent, large and giant landslides but under-predict an estimated Holocene frequency of giant landslides (> 1 km(3)) which we derived from a literature compilation. This discrepancy can be resolved when modelling the effect of a full distribution of earthquakes of variable magnitude and when considering that a shallower earthquake may cause larger landslides. In this case, EQIL and MIL contribute about equally to a total long-term erosion of similar to 2 +/- 0.75 mm yr(-1) in agreement with most thermo-chronological data. Independently of the specific total and relative erosion rates, the heavy-tailed size-frequency distribution from MIL and EQIL and the very large maximal landslide size in the Himalayas indicate that mean landslide erosion rates increase with sampling time, as has been observed for independent erosion estimates. Further, we find that the sampling timescale required to adequately capture the frequency of the largest landslides, which is necessary for deriving long-term mean erosion rates, is often much longer than the averaging time of cosmogenic Be-10 methods. This observation presents a strong caveat when interpreting spatial or temporal variability in erosion rates from this method. Thus, in areas where a very large, rare landslide contributes heavily to long-term erosion (as the Himalayas), we recommend Be-10 sample in catchments with source areas > 10 000 km(2) to reduce the method mean bias to below similar to 20 % of the long-term erosion. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-107-2019 SN - 2196-6311 SN - 2196-632X VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 107 EP - 128 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rault, Claire A1 - Robert, Alexandra A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Meunier, Patrick T1 - Seismic and geologic controls on spatial clustering of landslides in three large earthquakes JF - Earth surface dynamics N2 - The large, shallow earthquakes at Northridge, California (1994), Chi-Chi, Taiwan (1999), and Wenchuan, China (2008), each triggered thousands of landslides. We have determined the position of these landslides along hillslopes, normalizing for statistical bias. The landslide patterns have a co-seismic signature, with clustering at ridge crests and slope toes. A cross-check against rainfall-induced landslide inventories seems to confirm that crest clustering is specific to seismic triggering as observed in previous studies. In our three study areas, the seismic ground motion parameters and lithologic and topographic features used do not seem to exert a primary control on the observed patterns of landslide clustering. However, we show that at the scale of the epicentral area, crest and toe clustering occur in areas with specific geological features. Toe clustering of seismically induced landslides tends to occur along regional major faults. Crest clustering is concentrated at sites where the lithology along hillslopes is approximately uniform, or made of alternating soft and hard strata, and without strong overprint of geological structures. Although earthquake-induced landslides locate higher on hillslopes in a statistically significant way, geological features strongly modulate the landslide position along the hillslopes. As a result the observation of landslide clustering on topographic ridges cannot be used as a definite indicator of the topographic amplification of ground shaking. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-829-2019 SN - 2196-6311 SN - 2196-632X VL - 7 IS - 3 SP - 829 EP - 839 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Meunier, Patrick A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Prediction of the area affected by earthquake-induced landsliding based on seismological parameters JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - We present an analytical, seismologically consistent expression for the surface area of the region within which most landslides triggered by an earthquake are located (landslide distribution area). This expression is based on scaling laws relating seismic moment, source depth, and focal mechanism with ground shaking and fault rupture length and assumes a globally constant threshold of acceleration for onset of systematic mass wasting. The seismological assumptions are identical to those recently used to propose a seismologically consistent expression for the total volume and area of landslides triggered by an earthquake. To test the accuracy of the model we gathered geophysical information and estimates of the landslide distribution area for 83 earthquakes. To reduce uncertainties and inconsistencies in the estimation of the landslide distribution area, we propose an objective definition based on the shortest distance from the seismic wave emission line containing 95% of the total landslide area. Without any empirical calibration the model explains 56% of the variance in our dataset, and predicts 35 to 49 out of 83 cases within a factor of 2, depending on how we account for uncertainties on the seismic source depth. For most cases with comprehensive landslide inventories we show that our prediction compares well with the smallest region around the fault containing 95% of the total landslide area. Aspects ignored by the model that could explain the residuals include local variations of the threshold of acceleration and processes modulating the surface ground shaking, such as the distribution of seismic energy release on the fault plane, the dynamic stress drop, and rupture directivity. Nevertheless, its simplicity and first-order accuracy suggest that the model can yield plausible and useful estimates of the landslide distribution area in near-real time, with earthquake parameters issued by standard detection routines. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1159-2017 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 17 SP - 1159 EP - 1175 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tanyas, Hakan A1 - van Westen, Cees J. A1 - Allstadt, Kate E. A1 - Jessee, M. Anna Nowicki A1 - Gorum, Tolga A1 - Jibson, Randall W. A1 - Godt, Jonathan W. A1 - Sato, Hiroshi P. A1 - Schmitt, Robert G. A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Presentation and Analysis of a Worldwide Database of Earthquake-Induced Landslide Inventories JF - Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface N2 - Earthquake-induced landslide (EQIL) inventories are essential tools to extend our knowledge of the relationship between earthquakes and the landslides they can trigger. Regrettably, such inventories are difficult to generate and therefore scarce, and the available ones differ in terms of their quality and level of completeness. Moreover, access to existing EQIL inventories is currently difficult because there is no centralized database. To address these issues, we compiled EQIL inventories from around the globe based on an extensive literature study. The database contains information on 363 landslide-triggering earthquakes and includes 66 digital landslide inventories. To make these data openly available, we created a repository to host the digital inventories that we have permission to redistribute through the U.S. Geological Survey ScienceBase platform. It can grow over time as more authors contribute their inventories. We analyze the distribution of EQIL events by time period and location, more specifically breaking down the distribution by continent, country, and mountain region. Additionally, we analyze frequency distributions of EQIL characteristics, such as the approximate area affected by landslides, total number of landslides, maximum distance from fault rupture zone, and distance from epicenter when the fault plane location is unknown. For the available digital EQIL inventories, we examine the underlying characteristics of landslide size, topographic slope, roughness, local relief, distance to streams, peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and Modified Mercalli Intensity. Also, we present an evaluation system to help users assess the suitability of the available inventories for different types of EQIL studies and model development. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JF004236 SN - 2169-9003 SN - 2169-9011 VL - 122 SP - 1991 EP - 2015 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Emberson, Robert A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Galy, Albert A1 - Marc, Odin T1 - Chemical weathering in active mountain belts controlled by stochastic bedrock landsliding JF - Nature geoscience N2 - A link between chemical weathering and physical erosion exists at the catchment scale over a wide range of erosion rates(1,2). However, in mountain environments, where erosion rates are highest, weathering may be kinetically limited(3-5) and therefore decoupled from erosion. In active mountain belts, erosion is driven by bedrock landsliding(6) at rates that depend strongly on the occurrence of extreme rainfall or seismicity(7). Although landslides affect only a small proportion of the landscape, bedrock landsliding can promote the collection and slow percolation of surface runoff in highly fragmented rock debris and create favourable conditions for weathering. Here we show from analysis of surface water chemistry in the Southern Alps of New Zealand that weathering in bedrock landslides controls the variability in solute load of these mountain rivers. We find that systematic patterns in surface water chemistry are strongly associated with landslide occurrence at scales from a single hillslope to an entire mountain belt, and that landslides boost weathering rates and river solute loads over decades. We conclude that landslides couple erosion and weathering in fast-eroding uplands and, thus, mountain weathering is a stochastic process that is sensitive to climatic and tectonic controls on mass wasting processes. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/NGEO2600 SN - 1752-0894 SN - 1752-0908 VL - 9 SP - 42 EP - + PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Meunier, Patrick A1 - Gorum, Tolga A1 - Uchida, Taro T1 - A seismologically consistent expression for the total area and volume of earthquake-triggered landsliding JF - Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface N2 - We present a new, seismologically consistent expression for the total area and volume of populations of earthquake-triggered landslides. This model builds on a set of scaling relationships between key parameters, such as landslide spatial density, seismic ground acceleration, fault length, earthquake source depth, and seismic moment. To assess the model we have assembled and normalized a catalog of landslide inventories for 40 shallow, continental earthquakes. Low landscape steepness causes systematic overprediction of the total area and volume of landslides. When this effect is accounted for, the model predicts the total landslide volume of 63% of 40 cases to within a factor 2 of the volume estimated from observations (R-2 = 0.76). The prediction of total landslide area is also sensitive to the landscape steepness, but less so than the total volume, and it appears to be sensitive to controls on the landslide size-frequency distribution, and possibly the shaking duration. Some outliers are likely associated with exceptionally strong rock mass in the epicentral area, while others may be related to seismic source complexities ignored by the model. However, the close match between prediction and estimate for about two thirds of cases in our database suggests that rock mass strength is similar in many cases and that our simple seismic model is often adequate, despite the variety of lithologies and tectonic settings covered. This makes our expression suitable for integration into landscape evolution models and application to the anticipation or rapid assessment of secondary hazards associated with earthquakes. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JF003732 SN - 2169-9003 SN - 2169-9011 VL - 121 SP - 640 EP - 663 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Marc, Odin A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Meunier, P. T1 - The mass balance of earthquakes and earthquake sequences JF - Geophysical research letters N2 - Large, compressional earthquakes cause surface uplift aswell as widespread mass wasting. Knowledge of their trade-off is fragmentary. Combining a seismologically consistent model of earthquake-triggered landsliding and an analytical solution of coseismic surface displacement, we assess how the mass balance of single earthquakes and earthquake sequences depends on fault size and other geophysical parameters. We find that intermediate size earthquakes (M-w 6-7.3) may cause more erosion than uplift, controlled primarily by seismic source depth and landscape steepness, and less so by fault dip and rake. Such earthquakes can limit topographic growth, but our model indicates that both smaller and larger earthquakes (M-w < 6, M-w > 7.3) systematically cause mountain building. Earthquake sequences with a Gutenberg-Richter distribution have a greater tendency to lead to predominant erosion, than repeating earthquakes of the same magnitude, unless a fault can produce earthquakes with M-w > 8 or more. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068333 SN - 0094-8276 SN - 1944-8007 VL - 43 SP - 3708 EP - 3716 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Emberson, Robert A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Galy, Albert A1 - Marc, Odin T1 - Oxidation of sulfides and rapid weathering in recent landslides JF - Earth surface dynamics N2 - Bedrock landslides, by excavating deep below saprolite-rock interfaces, create conditions for weathering in which all mineral phases in a lithology are initially unweathered within landslide deposits. As a result, the most labile phases dominate the weathering immediately after mobilisation and during a transient period of depletion. This mode of dissolution can strongly alter the overall output of solutes from catchments and their contribution to global chemical cycles if landslide-derived material is retained in catchments for extended periods after mass wasting. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-4-727-2016 SN - 2196-6311 SN - 2196-632X VL - 4 SP - 727 EP - 742 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER -