Giant submarine landslides in gas hydrate provinces: a comparison of the Nile and Amazon deep-sea fans

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IN SHORT:
Giant submarine landslides (10-2000 km3) are found in the thick Quaternary sediment succession of passive continental margins. Their ages coincide with periods of sea-level fall and rise, but it is unclear how such vast failures can be triggered on low seafloor slopes (<2˚) in the absence of a triggering factor such as seismicity. Key hypotheses involve excess pore pressures linked to reductions in gas-hydrate stability, driven by changes either in climate or in subsurface fluid flow. The MEGA project wants to explore such hypotheses through the first modelling of linked changes in gas hydrate and slope stability in response to ocean pressure and temperature changes, using an innovative comparison of the Nile and Amazon deep-sea fans that experience different forms of climate forcing over glacial-interglacial timescales. As such megaslides have never triggered in historical times, MEGA will provide input for the first modelling of their tsunamogenic consequences on coastal zones.
PI : Sébastien Migeon, migeon@geoazur.unice.fr
Term: 1 February 2023 - 31 January 2026.
ANR fund: 533k€.