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Published December 2003 | Published
Journal Article Open

Landslide basal friction as measured by seismic waves

Abstract

Dynamical predictions of landslide runout require measurements of the basal friction. Here we present the first seismically determined bounds on the frictional coefficients for three large volcanic landslides. The three landslides (Bezymianny, Russia 1956, Sheveluch, Russia 1964 and Mount St. Helens, USA 1980) have masses that vary by a factor of 5 and were all followed immediately by eruptions. We use teleseismic and regional seismic data to show that all three landslides are consistent with an apparent coefficient of friction of 0.2 which corresponds to an actual areally-averaged frictional coefficient of 0.2–0.6. The apparent friction is independent of the quantity of hot gas subsequently released.

Additional Information

Copyright 2003 by the American Geophysical Union. Received 23 August 2003; revised 14 October 2003; accepted 21 October 2003; published 16 December 2003. The regional synthetic seismograms were calculated with programs written by L. Zhu. We thank A. Belousov and B. Voight for constructive reviews and R. Iverson for helpful discussions. The work was supported by NSF Grant EAR-0238455.

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August 22, 2023
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