Distant quakes trigger undersea landslides in Gulf of Mexico
Northern Gulf of Mexico deepwater bathymetry grid created from 3D seismic surveys. The grid defines water depth with 1.4 billion 40-by-40 ft cells, and is available in feet and meters. BOEM grid coverage is the area defined by the color in this image. Shaded relief is vertically exaggerated by a factor of five. Credit: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
By Alka Tripathy-Lang
May 18, 2020
Massive submarine landslides are often shaken loose if a large earthquake strikes nearby. However, triggers for smaller landslides are poorly understood. In a recent paper Dr. Wenyuan Fan and his colleagues, discovered 85 previously unknown submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico by analyzing 8 years of seismic data and extracting characteristic seismic signals of continental slope careening downhill.
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