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Recent Research

The largest landslides on Earth and their role in eroding mountain belts

Distributions of slope angles in tectonically active mountain belts point to the development of threshold conditions, where hillslopes attain a critical inclination or height at which they fail readily because of limitations in material strength. It has been proposed that hillslopes adjust to rapid uplift and bedrock incision through an increase in the rate of landsliding rather than gradual slope steepening.

We have tested this concept by investigating the relationship between mean local relief, which we take to be a proxy of long-term erosion rates, and the occurrence of more than 300 of the largest (>10⁸ m³) terrestrial landslides on Earth.

Nearly two-thirds of these giant landslides have occurred in the steepest 5% of Earth's land surface, where relief is close to its proposed upper strength limit. They are primarily located in deeply incised valleys, along fault-bounded fringes of active mountain belts, and in volcanic arcs.

This distribution coincides with areas of high long-term erosion rates (ca. 4 mm/yr), confirming that giant landslides contribute to rapid denudation of mountains. Most of the eroded volume is concentrated in the smallest, but steepest parts of mountain belts and volcanic arcs.

We estimate the minimum erosion rates accomplished by the largest landslides at ca. 0.01 mm/yr. However, in some mountain belts, landslide erosion may attain between 1% and 10% of the overall Late Pleistocene to Holocene mean erosion rates.

Importantly, the landslide erosion rates increase with mean local relief in a nonlinear fashion. This suggests that the contribution of giant landslides in total and per event increases significantly with increasing overall erosion rates.

However, giant landslides also occur in areas of lower-than-average relief (ca. 300-700 m), and irrespective of whether threshold hillslopes have developed or not. Factors contributing to these exceptional slope failures in low relief include soft rocks, extensive low-angle discontinuities, high rates of fluvial bedrock incision, and tectonically driven deformation and slope loading.

Read more:
Korup, O., Clague, J.J., Hermanns, R.L., Hewitt, K., Strom, A.L., Weidinger, J.T., 2007. Giant landslides, topography, and erosion. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 261, 578-589.

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