Orbital- and Millennial-Scale Changes in Lake-Levels Facilitate Earthquake-Triggered Mass Failures in the Dead Sea Basin

Yin Lu; Jasper Moernaut; Nicolas Waldmann; Revital Bookman; G. Ian Alsop; Aurélia Hubert-Ferrari; Michael Strasser; Amotz Agnon; Shmuel Marco

doi:10.1029/2021GL093391

Orbital- and Millennial-Scale Changes in Lake-Levels Facilitate Earthquake-Triggered Mass Failures in the Dead Sea Basin

Yin Lu^* (Corresponding Author), Jasper Moernaut, Nicolas Waldmann, Revital Bookman, G. Ian Alsop, Aurélia Hubert-Ferrari, Michael Strasser, Amotz Agnon, Shmuel Marco

^*Corresponding author for this work

Geology and Geophysics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

The possible link between the occurrence of submarine mass failure and climate-driven factors is highly disputed. This is due largely to the lack of comprehensive records of mass failures in the geologic record for which ages, triggers, and preconditioning factors can be reliably constrained. Such controls would allow accurate testing of cause-and-effect relationships. We present a record that comprises 490 earthquake-triggered mass failure deposits from the Dead Sea depocenter over the past 220 kyr that permits a robust statistical evaluation and correlation with potential preconditioning factors. Our data set reveals that (a) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, variable sedimentation rates are not a preconditioning factor for these mass failure deposits; (b) at the centennial-to decadal-scale, earthquake-triggered mass failures can occur at any lake-level state; (c) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, the mass failures are more frequent when lake-levels were high and punctuated by large-amplitude fluctuations.

Original language	English
Article number	e2021GL093391
Number of pages	12
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	48
Issue number	14
Early online date	30 Jun 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093391
Publication status	Published - 28 Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
The authors appreciate the editor L. Flesch for handling our manuscript, Ed Pope and Sebastian Cardona for constructive reviews. This research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): M 2817 to Y. Lu and P30285-N34 to J. Moernaut, the University of Liege under Special Funds for Research, IPD-STEMA Program (R.DIVE.0899-J-F-G to Y. Lu), the Israel Science Foundation (#1645/19 to S. Marco and #1093/10 to R. Bookman), and the ICDP. A.A. is indebted to the Helmholtz Virtual Institute DESERVE for support. The authors thank C. Daxer for help modeling the Kernel Density and Nadav Wetzler for discussion.

Keywords

mass failures
triggers
preconditioning factors
sea-level change
sedimentation rate
Dead Sea

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Lu_etal_GPR_Orbital_And_Millennial_VoR
© 2021. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 2.97 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Orbital- and Millennial-Scale Changes in Lake-Levels Facilitate Earthquake-Triggered Mass Failures in the Dead Sea Basin",

abstract = "The possible link between the occurrence of submarine mass failure and climate-driven factors is highly disputed. This is due largely to the lack of comprehensive records of mass failures in the geologic record for which ages, triggers, and preconditioning factors can be reliably constrained. Such controls would allow accurate testing of cause-and-effect relationships. We present a record that comprises 490 earthquake-triggered mass failure deposits from the Dead Sea depocenter over the past 220 kyr that permits a robust statistical evaluation and correlation with potential preconditioning factors. Our data set reveals that (a) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, variable sedimentation rates are not a preconditioning factor for these mass failure deposits; (b) at the centennial-to decadal-scale, earthquake-triggered mass failures can occur at any lake-level state; (c) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, the mass failures are more frequent when lake-levels were high and punctuated by large-amplitude fluctuations.",

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author = "Yin Lu and Jasper Moernaut and Nicolas Waldmann and Revital Bookman and {Ian Alsop}, G. and Aur{\'e}lia Hubert-Ferrari and Michael Strasser and Amotz Agnon and Shmuel Marco",

note = "Acknowledgments The authors appreciate the editor L. Flesch for handling our manuscript, Ed Pope and Sebastian Cardona for constructive reviews. This research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): M 2817 to Y. Lu and P30285-N34 to J. Moernaut, the University of Liege under Special Funds for Research, IPD-STEMA Program (R.DIVE.0899-J-F-G to Y. Lu), the Israel Science Foundation (#1645/19 to S. Marco and #1093/10 to R. Bookman), and the ICDP. A.A. is indebted to the Helmholtz Virtual Institute DESERVE for support. The authors thank C. Daxer for help modeling the Kernel Density and Nadav Wetzler for discussion.",

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AU - Ian Alsop, G.

AU - Hubert-Ferrari, Aurélia

AU - Strasser, Michael

AU - Agnon, Amotz

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N1 - Acknowledgments The authors appreciate the editor L. Flesch for handling our manuscript, Ed Pope and Sebastian Cardona for constructive reviews. This research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): M 2817 to Y. Lu and P30285-N34 to J. Moernaut, the University of Liege under Special Funds for Research, IPD-STEMA Program (R.DIVE.0899-J-F-G to Y. Lu), the Israel Science Foundation (#1645/19 to S. Marco and #1093/10 to R. Bookman), and the ICDP. A.A. is indebted to the Helmholtz Virtual Institute DESERVE for support. The authors thank C. Daxer for help modeling the Kernel Density and Nadav Wetzler for discussion.

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N2 - The possible link between the occurrence of submarine mass failure and climate-driven factors is highly disputed. This is due largely to the lack of comprehensive records of mass failures in the geologic record for which ages, triggers, and preconditioning factors can be reliably constrained. Such controls would allow accurate testing of cause-and-effect relationships. We present a record that comprises 490 earthquake-triggered mass failure deposits from the Dead Sea depocenter over the past 220 kyr that permits a robust statistical evaluation and correlation with potential preconditioning factors. Our data set reveals that (a) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, variable sedimentation rates are not a preconditioning factor for these mass failure deposits; (b) at the centennial-to decadal-scale, earthquake-triggered mass failures can occur at any lake-level state; (c) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, the mass failures are more frequent when lake-levels were high and punctuated by large-amplitude fluctuations.

AB - The possible link between the occurrence of submarine mass failure and climate-driven factors is highly disputed. This is due largely to the lack of comprehensive records of mass failures in the geologic record for which ages, triggers, and preconditioning factors can be reliably constrained. Such controls would allow accurate testing of cause-and-effect relationships. We present a record that comprises 490 earthquake-triggered mass failure deposits from the Dead Sea depocenter over the past 220 kyr that permits a robust statistical evaluation and correlation with potential preconditioning factors. Our data set reveals that (a) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, variable sedimentation rates are not a preconditioning factor for these mass failure deposits; (b) at the centennial-to decadal-scale, earthquake-triggered mass failures can occur at any lake-level state; (c) at the orbital- and millennial-scale, the mass failures are more frequent when lake-levels were high and punctuated by large-amplitude fluctuations.

KW - mass failures

KW - triggers

KW - preconditioning factors

KW - sea-level change

KW - sedimentation rate

KW - Dead Sea

U2 - 10.1029/2021GL093391

DO - 10.1029/2021GL093391

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VL - 48

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M1 - e2021GL093391

ER -

Orbital- and Millennial-Scale Changes in Lake-Levels Facilitate Earthquake-Triggered Mass Failures in the Dead Sea Basin

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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