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Millennial-scale record of landslides in the Andes consistent with earthquake trigger

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 925–930 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Geologic records of landslide activity offer rare glimpses into landscapes evolving under the influence of tectonics and climate. Because the deposits of individual landslides are unlikely to be preserved, landslide activity in the geologic past is often reconstructed by extrapolating from historic landslide inventories. Landslide deposits have been interpreted as palaeoclimate proxies relating to changes in precipitation, although earthquakes can also trigger landslides. Here we measure cosmogenic 10Be concentrations in individual cobbles from the modern Quebrada Veladera river channel and an adjacent terrace in Peru and calculate erosion rates. We find, in conjunction with a 10Be production model, that the 10Be concentrations of each cobble population record erosion integrated over thousands of years and are consistent with a landslide origin for the cobbles. The distribution of 10Be concentrations in terrace cobbles produced during the relatively wet climate before about 16,000 years ago is indistinguishable from the distribution in river channel cobbles produced during the drier climate of the past few thousand years. This suggests that the amount of erosion from landslides has not changed in response to climatic changes. Instead, our integrated, millennial-scale record of landslides implies that earthquakes may be the primary landslide trigger in the arid foothills of Peru.

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Figure 1: Geologic and geomorphic maps of Quebrada Veladera.
Figure 2: Distributions of single-clast 10Be concentrations.
Figure 3: Model results.
Figure 4: Model results for a range of values of the landslide scaling exponent.
Figure 5: Site-by-site comparison of 10Be concentrations of different grain sizes.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by National Science Foundation grant EAR-1049300 (D.M.). M. Sweeney assisted with fieldwork and analysed clast count data. N. Niemi provided a constructive review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA

    Devin McPhillips

  2. Department of Geology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, USA

    Devin McPhillips & Paul R. Bierman

  3. Department of Earth Science & Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK

    Dylan H. Rood

  4. Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride G75 0QF, UK

    Dylan H. Rood

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Contributions

D.M. conceived the study in collaboration with P.R.B.; D.M. wrote the manuscript, which P.R.B. and D.H.R. edited; D.M. carried out fieldwork, 10Be extraction, and modelling; P.R.B. supervised the 10Be extraction; D.H.R. performed accelerator mass spectrometry.

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Correspondence to Devin McPhillips.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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McPhillips, D., Bierman, P. & Rood, D. Millennial-scale record of landslides in the Andes consistent with earthquake trigger. Nature Geosci 7, 925–930 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2278

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