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Whether Earth materials exhibit frictional creep or catastrophic failure is a crucial but unresolved problem in predicting landslide and earthquake hazards. Here, we show that field-scale observations of sliding velocity and pore water pressure at two creeping landslides are explained by velocity-strengthening friction, in close agreement with laboratory measurements on similar materials. This suggests that the rate-strengthening friction commonly measured in clay-rich materials may govern episodic slow slip in landslides, in addition to tectonic faults. Further, our results show more generally that transient slow slip can arise in velocity-strengthening materials from modulation of effective normal stress through pore pressure fluctuations. This challenges the idea that episodic slow slip requires a narrow range of transitional frictional properties near the stability threshold, or pore pressure feedbacks operating on initially unstable frictional slip.
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Seasonal Slow Landslide Displacement Is Accommodated by mm‐Scale Stick‐Slip Events
Abstract Like faults, landslides can slip slowly for decades or accelerate catastrophically. However, whereas experimentally derived friction laws provide mechanistically based explanations for similarly diverse behavior on faults, little monitoring exists over the temporal and spatial scales required to more clearly illuminate the mechanics of landslide friction. Here we show that displacement of an active slow landslide is accommodated primarily through mm‐scale stick‐slip events that recur on timescales of minutes to hours on asperities that are small (<100 m) relative to the landslide. The frequency of slip events tracks both landslide velocity and pore fluid pressure. The stick‐slip nature demonstrates by itself that slow slip is governed, at least in part, by velocity‐weakening frictional asperities. This observation, in combination with the sensitivity of slow slip to pore fluid pressure and the small relative scale of asperities, suggests similarities between slow slip in landslides and episodic slow slip along faults.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1658800
- PAR ID:
- 10376575
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 20
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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