scholarly journals The origins of Late Quaternary debris avalanche and debris flow deposits from Cofre de Perote volcano, México

Geosphere ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 950-971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Díaz-Castellón ◽  
Bernard E. Hubbard ◽  
Gerardo Carrasco-Núñez ◽  
José Luis Rodríguez-Vargas
CATENA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Oguchi ◽  
Chiaki T. Oguchi

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 (9) ◽  
pp. 1833-1846 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. E. Aksu ◽  
David J. W. Piper

Baffin Bay is a small ocean basin that connects the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. The adjacent continental shelves have been extensively reworked during Quaternary glaciation. The shelf break generally lies between 200 and 500 m. The continental slope passes directly into the abyssal plain of Baffin Bay basin without any major submarine canyon – deep-sea fan system being present, except for a large smooth sediment apron in northern Baffin Bay.On the basis of over 50 piston cores, six Quaternary sediment facies are distinguished from detrital mineralogy (reflected in colour) and sediment texture. Facies A, B, and C are predominantly ice-rafted or are debris flow deposits, each with a distinct mineralogy. Facies D is turbidites and bottom-current sorted sands, silts, and muds. Facies E is hemipelagic sediment. Facies F consists of sediments ranging from slumps, through debris flow deposits, to fine-grained turbidites, with a distinctive provenance in northern Baffin Bay.These sediment facies appear to be partly controlled by glacial conditions. Hemipelagic facies E predominates during the present interglacial. During glacial stages, facies D turbidites were deposited. They resulted from slumping of proglacial sediments on the continental slopes off Greenland and Baffin Island. Facies C and F occurred on the continental slopes at these times. Ice-rafted facies A and B predominate at several horizons, reflecting a rapid breakup of ice shelves in northern Baffin Bay and increased rates of iceberg melting within the Bay. Overall sedimentation rates are relatively low, reflecting dry-base ice sheets in source areas.Deep-sea channel systems floored by sorted coarse sediments and bounded by muddy levees are absent in Baffin Bay, in contrast to mid-latitude glaciated continental margins off eastern Canada. These channel systems are the result of melting of wet-base glaciers, which provide a localized supply of sediment that is sorted by ice margin processes. In Baffin Bay, most glacial sediments are derived by calving of icebergs, probably from dry-base glaciers. Sediments are gradually released over large areas as the bergs melt, and are subsequently redistributed by debris flows.


2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oldrich Hungr ◽  
S. G. Evans ◽  
M. J. Bovis ◽  
J. N. Hutchinson

Abstract As a result of the widespread use of the landslide classifications of Varnes (1978), and Hutchinson (1988), certain terms describing common types of flow-like mass movements have become entrenched in the language of engineering geology. Example terms include debris flow, debris avalanche and mudslide. Here, more precise definitions of the terms are proposed, which would allow the terms to be retained with their original meanings while making their application less ambiguous. A new division of landslide materials is proposed, based on genetic and morphological aspects rather than arbitrary grain-size limits. The basic material groups include sorted materials: gravel, sand, silt, and clay, unsorted materials: debris, earth and mud, peat and rock. Definitions are proposed for relatively slow non-liquefied sand or gravel flows, extremely rapid sand, silt or debris flow slides accompanied by liquefaction, clay flow slides involving extra-sensitive clays, peat flows, slow to rapid earth flows in nonsensitive plastic clays, debris flows which occur in steep established channels or gullies, mud flows considered as cohesive debris flows, debris floods involving massive sediment transport at limited discharges, debris avalanches which occur on open hill slopes and rock avalanches formed by large scale failures of bedrock.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Kerry Cato ◽  
Brett Goforth

ABSTRACT Historical patterns of debris flows have been reconstructed at the town of Forest Falls in the San Bernardino Mountains using a variety of field methods (mapping flow events after occurrence, dendrochronology evidence, soil chronosequences). Large flow events occur when summer thunderstorms produce brief high-intensity rainfall to mobilize debris; however, the geomorphic system exhibits properties of non-linear response rather than being a single-event precipitation-driven process. Previous studies contrasted the relative water content of flows generated by varying-intensity summer thunderstorms to model factors controlling flow velocity and pathway of deposition. We hypothesize that sediment discharge in this geomorphic system exhibits multiple sources of complexity and present evidence of (1) thresholds of sediment delivery from sources at the higher reaches of bedrock canyons, (2) storage effects in sediment transport down the bedrock canyons, and (3) feedbacks in deposition, remobilization, and transport of sediment across the alluvial fan in dynamic channel filling, cutting, and avulsion processes. An example of the first component occurred in March 2017, when snowmelt generated a rapid translational landslide and debris avalanche of about 80,000 m3; this sediment was deposited in the bedrock canyon but moved no farther down gradient. The second component was observed when accumulation of meta-stable sediments in the bedrock canyon remained in place until fluvial erosion and subsequent debris flow provided dynamic instability to remobilize the mass downstream. The third component occurred on the alluvial fan below the bedrock canyon, where low-water-content debris flows deposited sediments that filled the active channel, raising the channel grade level to levee elevation, allowing for subsequent spread of non-channelized flows onto the fan surface and scouring new channel pathways down fan. A conceptual model of spatial and temporal complexities in this debris-flow system is proposed to guide future study for improved risk prediction.


2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 1257-1279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher F Waythomas ◽  
Kristi L Wallace

An areally extensive volcanic mass-flow deposit of Pleistocene age, known as the Chetaslina volcanic mass-flow deposit, is a prominent and visually striking deposit in the southeastern Copper River lowland of south-central Alaska. The mass-flow deposit consists of a diverse mixture of colorful, variably altered volcanic rocks, lahar deposits, glaciolacustrine diamicton, and till that record a major flank collapse on the southwest flank of Mount Wrangell. The deposit is well exposed near its presumed source, and thick, continuous, stratigraphic exposures have permitted us to study its sedimentary characteristics as a means of better understanding the origin, significance, and evolution of the deposit. Deposits of the Chetaslina volcanic mass flow in the Chetaslina River drainage are primary debris-avalanche deposits and consist of two principal facies types, a near-source block facies and a distal mixed facies. The block facies is composed entirely of block-supported, shattered and fractured blocks with individual blocks up to 40 m in diameter. The mixed facies consists of block-sized particles in a matrix of poorly sorted rock rubble, sand, and silt generated by the comminution of larger blocks. Deposits of the Chetaslina volcanic mass flow exposed along the Copper, Tonsina, and Chitina rivers are debris-flow deposits that evolved from the debris-avalanche component of the flow and from erosion and entrainment of local glacial and glaciolacustrine diamicton in the Copper River lowland. The debris-flow deposits were probably generated through mixing of the distal debris avalanche with the ancestral Copper River, or through breaching of a debris-avalanche dam across the ancestral river. The distribution of facies types and major-element chemistry of clasts in the deposit indicate that its source was an ancestral volcanic edifice, informally known as the Chetaslina vent, on the southwest side of Mount Wrangell. A major sector collapse of the Chetaslina vent initiated the Chetaslina volcanic mass flow forming a debris avalanche of about 4 km3 that subsequently transformed to a debris flow of unknown volume.


1997 ◽  
Vol 102 (B9) ◽  
pp. 20305-20323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Urgeles ◽  
Miquel Canals ◽  
Jesús Baraza ◽  
Belén Alonso ◽  
Doug Masson

2018 ◽  
Vol 477 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Normandeau ◽  
D. Calvin Campbell ◽  
David J. W. Piper ◽  
Kimberley A. Jenner

AbstractThe Laurentian Fan is one of the largest submarine fans on the western margin of the North Atlantic. Recently acquired high-resolution multibeam bathymetric data (60 m horizontal resolution) reveal a major mass-transport deposit (MTD) on the Western Levee of Western Valley (WLWV), covering >14 000 km2 in water depths from 3900 to >5000 m. Typical submarine landslide features are observed such as headscarps that in places reach the crest of the levee, crown cracks, extensional ridges, blocky debris and flow lineations. Multiple headwalls are observed on 3.5 kHz sub-bottom profiles, indicating that the landslide retrogressed upslope. While the upper parts of the MTD consist of intact blocks that were displaced downslope as ridges and troughs, the lower parts exhibit a c. 30 m thick incoherent to transparent acoustic facies, typical of debris flows. Landslide geomorphology therefore suggests that it was generated as a retrogressive spread and that slide blocks disintegrated downslope to become a blocky landslide with a surficial debris flow. The blocky landslide/debris flow extends downslope c. 90 km and partially fills a submarine channel. The superposition of the MTD filling the channel and its location at the top of the stratigraphic succession in the levee suggests that it is late Quaternary in age, possibly Holocene. Deeper seismic reflection data also show that this is a rare event during the Quaternary; it is the largest MTD observed in the upper c. 375 m of the levee succession and among the largest and deepest in the western North Atlantic.


2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor M. Levson ◽  
Nathaniel W. Rutter

ABSTRACTThe Pleistocene stratigraphy of the central Canadian Rocky Mountains is described from a region where few studies of Late Quaternary deposits have been conducted. Six informal lithostratigraphic units are recognized from newly mapped exposures in Jasper National Park. The oldest deposits are interpreted as paleofan deposits (Unit 1) and they are overlain by glaciofluvial gravels and sands (Unit 2), glaciolacustrine sediments (Unit 3) and by a glacigenic diamicton sequence (Unit 4) that includes basal till, supraglacial deposits and ice-marginal debris flow sediments. Proximal glaciofluvial gravels, debris flow deposits and minor glaciolacustrine sediments (Unit 5) and paragiacial fan deposits and loess (Unit 6) cap the stratigraphic sequence. Limited chronologic control suggests that nonglacial fluvial and alluvial fan sedimentation began prior to 48 ka and continued throughout the Middle Wisconsinan. Braided stream deposits were accumulating in the Athabasca River valley near Jasper townsite about 29 ka. In the Late Wisconsinan, Rocky Mountain and Cordilleran glaciers advanced through the area, initially damming lakes in a number of Front Range tributary valleys. During déglaciation, ice-marginal glaciofluvial activity and paragiacial debris flows dominated sedimentation. Glacial lakes were limited in extent. A radiocarbon date on shells from one small ice-marginal lake indicates that glaciers were well in retreat by about 12 ka. Alpine glaciers in the region were at or near their present limits by 10 ka.


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