natural hazards and earth system sciences2018Vol. 18pp. 1411-1425
330
beckers2018characteristicsnatural
Abstract
Coastal and submarine landslides are frequent at the western tip of the Gulf
of Corinth, where small to medium failure events (106–107 m3)
occur on average every 30–50 years. These landslides trigger tsunamis and
consequently represent a significant hazard. We use here a dense grid of
high-resolution seismic profiles to realize an inventory of the large mass
transport deposits (MTDs) that result from these submarine landslides. Six
large mass wasting events are identified, and their associated deposits
locally represent 30 % of the sedimentation since 130 ka in the main western
basin. In the case of a large MTD of ∼ 1 km3 volume, the
simultaneous occurrence of different slope failures is inferred and suggests
an earthquake triggering. However, the overall temporal distribution of MTDs
would result from the time-dependent evolution of pre-conditioning factors
rather than from the recurrence of external triggers. Two likely main
pre-conditioning factors are (1) the reloading time of slopes, which varied
with the sedimentation rate, and (2) dramatic changes in water depth and
water circulation that occurred 10–12 ka ago during the last post-glacial
transgression. Such sliding events likely generated large tsunami waves in
the whole Gulf of Corinth, possibly larger than those reported in historical
sources considering the observed volume of the MTDs.