Submarine landslides retrogressively fail from intact material at the headwall and then become fluidized by strain weakening; the final deposits of these flows have low porosity, which controls their character in seismic reflection data. Submarine landslides occur on the open slope and also localized areas including margins of turbidite channel-levee systems. I develop and quantify this model with 3-D seismic reflection data, core and log data from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 308 (Ursa Basin, Gulf of Mexico), flume experiments, and numerical modeling. At Ursa, multiple submarine slides over the last 60 ky are preserved as mass transport deposits (MTDs). Retrogression proceeded from an initial slope failure that created an excavated headwall, which reduced the horizontal stress behind the headwall and resulted in normal faults. Fault blocks progressively weakened until the gravitational driving stress imposed by the bed slope exceeded soil strength, which allowed the soil to flow for more than 10 km away from the source area. The resulting MTDs have lower porosity (higher bulk density) relative to non-failed sediments, which ultimately produces high amplitude reflections at the base and top of MTDs. In the laboratory, I made weak (low yield strength) and strong flows (high yield strength) from mixtures of clay, silt, and water. Weak flows generate turbidity currents while moving rapidly away from the source area. They create thin and long deposits with sinuous flow features, and leave behind a relatively smooth and featureless source area. In contrast, strong flows move slowly, do not generate a turbidity current, and create blocky, highly fractured source areas and short, thick depositional lobes. In Pleistocene turbidite channels of the Mississippi Fan, deep-seated rotational failures occurred in the flanking levees. The rotational failures displaced material into the channel from below where it became eroded by turbidity flows. This system achieved a delicate steady state where levee deposition and displacement along the fault into the channel was balanced by erosion rate of turbidity flows. This work enhances our understanding of geohazards and margin evolution by illuminating coupled processes of sedimentation, fluid flow, and deformation on passive continental margins. / text

Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji, is located in a seismically active area within the Fiji Platform - a remnant island arc that lies in a diffuse plate boundary zone between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates in the southwest Pacific. The southeast coast of Viti Levu is a highly developed and populated part of Fiji and is vulnerable to the effects of large earthquakes that are expected to occur both onshore and offshore. The structural framework and the origin of seismicity within the Fiji Platform, as well as the seismic and tsunami hazards of central and southeast Viti Levu are investigated. The upper crust of southeast Viti Levu is dissected by several intersecting fault/lineament zones. These are mapped from remote sensing imagery of the surface (topography, radar, and aerial photos) and of the basement (magnetic), and have been subject to rigorous statistical tests of reproducibility and verification with field mapped fault data. Lineaments on the various imagery correlate with faults mapped in the field and show spatial continuity between and beyond mapped faults, thereby providing a fuller coverage of regional structural patterns than previously known. Some fault/lineament zones extend beyond the coastline to the offshore area of southeast Viti Levu. Here high resolution SeaBAT 8160 multibeam bathymetry data and seismic reflection data show that the fault zones occur along, and exert control on the locations of a number of linear submarine canyons. The morpho-structural expression of these canyons are contiguous with fault controlled physiographic features mapped on the nearshore marginal shelf (rectilinear bays and peninsulas, reef passages) and on land (fault valleys, slope and drainage alignments forming lineaments). The canyons are considered to have developed from several cycles of downslope incising and infilling events, whilst their positions were still primarily controlled by zones of weakness created by the fault zones. The principal fault sets in southeast Viti Levu represent generations of regional tectonic faulting that pervaded the Fiji Platform during and after disruption of the proto Fijian arc in the Middle to Late Miocene. These fault sets combine to form a complex network of interlocking faults creating a fault mesh that divides the upper crust into a number of fault blocks ranging from ~2 to 30 km. It is inferred that the fault mesh evolved throughout the Neogene as a response to the anticlockwise rotation of the Fiji Platform through progressive development of different fault sets and intervening crustal block rotations. Regional tectonic deformation is presently accommodated in a distributed manner through the entire fault mesh. Low magnitude earthquakes (<M4) occur regularly and may represent ruptures along short linking segments of the fault mesh, while infrequent larger earthquakes (>M4) may result from complex rupture propagation through several linking fault segments of the mesh that lie close to optimum stress orientations. This interpreted model of distributed deformation through the fault mesh for southeast Viti Levu is inferred to be characteristic of the style of active deformation that occurs throughout the entire Fiji Platform. Seismic activity is primarily responsible for triggering submarine landslides that occur on the southeastern slope of Viti Levu. These slides typically occur on the outer barrier reef edge, as well as in submarine canyon heads and walls, and in the mid slope areas. They are characteristically translational and lack bathymetric evidence for displaced masses. Morphometric analysis and empirical modelling, show that slides triggered at shallow water depths, within 5 km of the coastline, at the outer barrier reef edge and submarine canyon heads, produce the largest near-field tsunami amplitudes. Such slides are interpreted to represent a significant local tsunami hazard. A detailed case study of the destructive 1953 Suva tsunami that followed the Ms 6.75 Suva earthquake, reveals that the source of this tsunami was a 60 million cubic metre submarine landslide at the head of the Suva Canyon, 4 km to the WSW of Suva City. A test simulation of this tsunami using the Geowave tsunami generation, propagation and inundation model, closely replicates the wave heights and arrival times recorded in 1953. This simulation also reveals that high variability in tsunami impact over short coastal distances of southeast Viti Levu is attributable to the complex interplay of wave propagation with the barrier reef system, erratic lagoon bathymetry and the irregularly shaped coastline. A predictive simulation using Geowave, based on an incipient failure in the 1953 source area and on a potentially worse case scenario event at or near high-tide, is used to show a maximum vertical run up of at least 4 m and a maximum horizontal inundation level of at least 400 m at the Suva coast. The seismic hazard of five sites on Viti Levu, including Suva City, Navua and Nausori Towns, and the Monsavu and Nadarivatu dam sites, is evaluated using a deterministic approach, and seven newly identified crustal fault earthquake source structures. The maximum magnitudes interpreted for these structures, estimated using empirical relationships, range from Mw 6.8 to 7.6. The Suva Canyon Fault, the Naqara Fault, the Mavuvu/Fault Lineament Zone and the Nasivi Fault provide the controlling maximum credible earthquakes (CMCE) at all the five sites. The CMCE peak ground acceleration values for Suva City range from 0.4g to 0.6g, for Nausori Town from 0.18g to 0.2g, for Navua Town from 0.27g to 0.32g, for Monasavu from 0.39g to 0.42g, and for Nadarivatu from 0.23g to 0.33g. The horizontal spectral accelerations at a period equal to 0.2 seconds, calculated using the CMCEs, are comparable to accelerations derived by probabilistic methods that have return periods between 50 and over 1000 years.

In recent years, the increasing impacts of landslide hazards on human lives and lifeline facilities worldwide has advanced the necessity to find out both economically acceptable and useful techniques to predict the occurrence and destructive power of landslides. Though many projects exist to attain this goal, the current investigation set out to establish an understanding of the initiation and propagation mechanisms of landslides via numerical simulations, so that mitigation strategies to reduce the long-term losses from landslide hazards can be made. In this research, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have been used to investigate the mechanical and hydraulic behaviour of granular materials involved in landslides. The main challenge is to provide rational analyses of large scale landslides via small scale numerical simulations. To solve this problem, dimensional analyses have been performed on a simple granular column collapse model. The influence of governing dimensionless groups on the debris runout distance and deposit height has been studied for the terrestrial and submerged granular flows. 3D DEM investigations of granular flows in plane strain conditions have been performed in this research. The input parameters of the DEM model have been calibrated by the numerical triaxial tests, based on which, the relationships between the microscopic variables and the macroscopic soil strength properties are analysed. Using the simple granular column collapse model, the influences of column aspect ratio, characteristic strain, model size ratio and material internal friction angle on the runout distance and deposit height of granular materials have been examined. Additionally, the deformation and energy evolution of dry granular materials are also discussed. The DEM-CFD coupling model has been employed to study the mechanical and hydraulic behaviour of highly mobilized terrestrial / submarine landslides. This model has been validated via numerical simulations of fluid flow through a porous soil sample and grain batch sedimentations. The simulations of granular flows in the submerged environment have led to some meaningful insights into the flow mechanisms, such as the mobilization of sediments, the generation and dissipation of excess pore water pressures and the evolution of effective stresses. Overall, this study shows that the proposed numerical tools are capable of modelling the mechanical and hydraulic behaviour of terrestrial and submarine landslides.

La marge Ligure est une marge passive soumise à une déformation tectonique compressive associée à la tectonique salifère messinienne. La reprise en compression de la marge s’accompagne d’une sismicité modérée récurrente ponctuée d’évènements plus forts. La marge Ligure est le siège d’une sédimentation importante au Plio-Quaternaire. Elle constitue un environnement propice à l’étude des déstabilisations gravitaires. L’objectif principal de ce travail était de décrire et caractériser les principaux mouvements en masse ayant affecté la marge continentale Ligure au cours du Plio-Quaternaire, de localiser les principales zones sujettes aux déstabilisations et d’identifier les facteurs pré-conditionnant et déclenchant les ruptures dans le but de mieux évaluer l’aléa gravitaire. Une large couverture de données bathymétriques, géophysiques et des carottages acquis sur l’ensemble de la marge a permis de réaliser une étude multi-échelles des processus de ruptures gravitaires et des facteurs déclenchant associés. Près de 1500 glissements ont été identifiés. L’étude de leur répartition spatio-temporelle illustre que l’ensemble de la marge a toujours été affectée par des déstabilisations de pente mais que les principales zones de ruptures auraient migré vers l’ouest au cours du Plio-Quaternaire. Les grandes ruptures sous-marines sont préférentiellement associées aux zones de déformation maximale, cette dernière étant contrôlée par la tectonique crustale et/ou la tectonique salifère. Il apparaît que les ruptures résultent plus généralement d’une association de facteurs distincts qui ont participé à fragiliser la stabilité des dépôts de la pente et qui ont pu provoquer leur rupture. / The Ligurian margin is a passive margin characterized by high sedimentation rates during the Plio-Quaternary. It is affected by a compressive tectonic deformation leading to the inversion of the margin, together with a salt tectonic. The present-day moderate seismic activity is punctuated by stronger seismic events. Thus, this margin offers a good natural laboratory to study submarine landslides and their triggering factors. Although the Var Turbidite System has been well investigated over the last 20 years, the morphology and tectonics/sedimentary processes affecting the whole margin remained poorly known. This study aims to describe and to characterize the main types of mass movements, their preferential locations along the Ligurian margin during the Plio-Quaternary and their triggering factors to improve geohazards assessment related to landslides. A dataset including bathymetric and geophysical data and cores allowed to realize a multi-scale study of submarine failures and their associated triggering factors. About 1500 landslides were identified on the margin and in the basin. The study of their spatio-temporal distribution revealed that the margin has always been affected by mass-wasting processes and that the main zones of landsliding migrated westward during the Plio-Quaternary. The largest submarine landslides are preferentially associated with the highest deformation rates and their location is controlled by crustal tectonics and/or salt tectonics. The initiation of failures results from the combination of several factors including the margin deformation, earthquakes, salt tectonics and sediment under-consolidation.

The primary focus of this thesis is to examine the detailed seismic structure of the northern Cascadia margin, including the Cascadia basin, the deformation front and the continental shelf. The results of this study are contributing towards understanding sediment deformation and tectonics on this margin. They also have important implications for exploration of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) and natural hazards (submarine landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, and climate change). The first part of this thesis focuses on the role of gas hydrate in slope failure observed from multibeam bathymetry data on a frontal ridge near the deformation front off Vancouver Island margin using active-source ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) data collected in 2010. Volume estimates (∼ 0.33 km^3) of the slides observed on this margin indicate that these are capable of generating large (∼ 1 − 2 m) tsunamis. Velocity models from travel time inversion of wide angle reflections and refractions recorded on OBSs and vertical incidence single channel seismic (SCS) data were used to estimate gas hydrate concentrations using effective medium modeling. Results indicate a shallow high velocity hydrate layer with a velocity of 2.0 − 2.1 km/s that corresponds to a hydrate concentration of 40% at a depth of 100 m, and a bottom simulating reflector (BSR) at a depth of 265 − 275 m beneath the seafloor (mbsf). These are comparable to drilling results on an adjacent frontal ridge. Margin perpendicular normal faults that extend down to BSR depth were also observed on SCS and bathymetric data, two of which coincide with the sidewalls of the slump indicating that the lateral extent of the slump is controlled by these faults. Analysis of bathymetric data indicates, for the first time, that the glide plane occurs at the same depth as the shallow high velocity layer (100±10 mbsf). In contrast, the glide plane coincides with the depth of the BSR on an adjacent frontal ridge. In either case, our results suggest that the contrast in sediments strengthened by hydrates and overlying or underlying sediments where there is no hydrate is what causing the slope failure on this margin. The second part of this dissertation focuses on obtaining the detailed structure of the Cascadia basin and frontal ridge region using mirror imaging of few widely spaced OBS data. Using only a small airgun source (120 cu. in.), our results indicate structures that were previously not observed on the northern Cascadia margin. Specifically, OBS migration results show dual-vergence structure, which could be related to horizontal compression associated with subduction and low basal shear stress resulting from over-pressure. Understanding the physical and mechanical properties of the basal layer has important implications for understanding earthquakes on this margin. The OBS migrated image also clearly shows the continuity of reflectors which enabled the identification of thrust faults, and also shows the top of the igneous oceanic crust at 5−6 km beneath the seafloor, which were not possible to identify in single-channel and low-fold multi-channel seismic (MCS) data. The last part of this thesis focuses on obtaining detailed seismic structure of the Vancouver Island continental shelf from MCS data using frequency domain viscoacoustic full waveform inversion, which is first of its kind on this margin. Anelastic velocity and attenuation models, derived in this study to subseafloor depths of ∼ 2 km, are useful in understanding the deformation within the Tofino basin sediments, the nature of basement structures and their relationship with underlying accreted terranes such as the Crescent and the Pacific Rim terranes. Specifically, our results indicate a low-velocity zone (LVZ) with a contrast of 200 m/s within the Tofino basin sediment section at a depth 600 − 1000 mbsf over a lateral distance of 10 km. This LVZ is associated with high attenuation values (0.015 − 0.02) and could be a result of over pressured sediments or lithology changes associated with a high porosity layer in this potential hydrocarbon environment. Shallow high velocities of 4 − 5 km/s are observed in the mid-shelf region at depths > 1.5 km, which is interpreted as the shallowest occurrence of the Eocene volcanic Crescent terrane. The sediment velocities sharply increase about 10 km west of Vancouver Island, which probably corresponds to the underlying transition to the Mesozoic marine sedimentary Pacific Rim terrane. High attenuation values of 0.03 − 0.06 are observed at depths > 1 km, which probably corresponds to increased clay content and the presence of mineralized fluids. / Graduate / 0373 / 0372 / 0605 / subbarao@uvic.ca