Seasonal slow slip in landslides as a window into the frictional rheology of creeping shear zones.

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Finnegan NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11482306 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature