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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04310 |
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| _version_ | 1866912418352857088 |
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| author | Lei, Qinghua Sornette, Didier |
| author_facet | Lei, Qinghua Sornette, Didier |
| contents | Landslides exhibit intermittent gravity-driven downslope movements developing over days to years before a possible major collapse, commonly boosted by external events like precipitations and earthquakes. The reasons behind these episodic movements and how they relate to the final instability remain poorly understood. Here, we develop a novel "endo-exo" theory to quantitatively diagnose landslide dynamics, capturing the interplay between exogenous stressors such as rainfall and endogenous damage/healing processes. We predict four distinct types of episodic landslide dynamics (endogenous/exogenous-subcritical/critical), characterized by power law relaxations with different exponents, all related to a single parameter \vartheta. These predictions are tested on the dataset of the Preonzo landslide, which exhibited multi-year episodic movements prior to a catastrophic collapse. All its sporadic activities can be accounted for within this classification with \vartheta \approx 0.45\pm0.1, providing strong support for our parsimonious theory. We find that the final collapse of this landslide is clearly preceded over 1-2 months by an increased frequency of medium/large velocities, signaling the transition into a catastrophic regime with amplifying positive feedbacks. Our research suggests that landslides may not permanently operate at a critical state, which has major implications for forecasting catastrophic failure events. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_04310 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Endo-exo framework for a unifying classification of episodic landslide movements Lei, Qinghua Sornette, Didier Geophysics Landslides exhibit intermittent gravity-driven downslope movements developing over days to years before a possible major collapse, commonly boosted by external events like precipitations and earthquakes. The reasons behind these episodic movements and how they relate to the final instability remain poorly understood. Here, we develop a novel "endo-exo" theory to quantitatively diagnose landslide dynamics, capturing the interplay between exogenous stressors such as rainfall and endogenous damage/healing processes. We predict four distinct types of episodic landslide dynamics (endogenous/exogenous-subcritical/critical), characterized by power law relaxations with different exponents, all related to a single parameter \vartheta. These predictions are tested on the dataset of the Preonzo landslide, which exhibited multi-year episodic movements prior to a catastrophic collapse. All its sporadic activities can be accounted for within this classification with \vartheta \approx 0.45\pm0.1, providing strong support for our parsimonious theory. We find that the final collapse of this landslide is clearly preceded over 1-2 months by an increased frequency of medium/large velocities, signaling the transition into a catastrophic regime with amplifying positive feedbacks. Our research suggests that landslides may not permanently operate at a critical state, which has major implications for forecasting catastrophic failure events. |
| title | Endo-exo framework for a unifying classification of episodic landslide movements |
| topic | Geophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04310 |