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Positive feedback and momentum growth during debris-flow entrainment of wet bed sediment

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 116–121 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Debris flows typically occur when intense rainfall or snowmelt triggers landslides or extensive erosion on steep, debris-mantled slopes. The flows can then grow dramatically in size and speed as they entrain material from their beds and banks, but the mechanism of this growth is unclear. Indeed, momentum conservation implies that entrainment of static material should retard the motion of the flows if friction remains unchanged. Here we use data from large-scale experiments to assess the entrainment of bed material by debris flows. We find that entrainment is accompanied by increased flow momentum and speed only if large positive pore pressures develop in wet bed sediments as the sediments are overridden by debris flows. The increased pore pressure facilitates progressive scour of the bed, reduces basal friction and instigates positive feedback that causes flow speed, mass and momentum to increase. If dryer bed sediment is entrained, however, the feedback becomes negative and flow momentum declines. We infer that analogous feedbacks could operate in other types of gravity-driven mass flow that interact with erodible beds.

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Figure 1: Photographs of the USGS debris-flow flume during entrainment experiment A.
Figure 2: Measured positions of debris-flow fronts in experiments A–J as a function of time and bed-sediment volumetric water content, θ.
Figure 3: Post-entrainment flow conditions as a function of bed water content θ in experiments A–H.
Figure 4: Time-series data acquired at x = 32 and 66 m in two experiments (C and G) with contrasting bed-sediment water contents (θ).

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Swinford, R. Denlinger, S. Henderson, D. George, C. Fox-Lent, J. Coe, W. Schulz, B. McArdell and C. Berger for assisting with experiments, and we thank A. Mangeney, J. Kean and J. Walder for providing useful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. US Geological Survey, Vancouver, Washington 98683, USA

    Richard M. Iverson, Matthew Logan, Richard G. LaHusen & Julia P. Griswold

  2. US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Mark E. Reid

  3. US Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado 80225, USA

    Jonathan W. Godt

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  1. Richard M. Iverson
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Contributions

R.M.I., M.E.R., M.L., R.G.L. and J.W.G. designed and implemented various facets of the experiments and measurement protocols, and R.M.I., M.E.R., M.L., R.G.L. and J.P.G. collected, processed and analysed the data. R.M.I. wrote the paper, but all authors concurred with the paper’s content.

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Correspondence to Richard M. Iverson.

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Iverson, R., Reid, M., Logan, M. et al. Positive feedback and momentum growth during debris-flow entrainment of wet bed sediment. Nature Geosci 4, 116–121 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1040

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