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Altered marine tephra deposits as potential slope failure planes?

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Abstract

Weathering of tephra results in increasing proportions of mechanically weak, authigenic clay minerals (smectite). This suggests that altered tephra represent inherent weak layers in slope sediment sequences, and these may facilitate slope failure in submarine and other aquatic environments. In drained direct shear experiments, tephra in different alteration stages were compared to common sand–clay mixtures for geotechnical reference. Attention is drawn to the influence of particle shape on shear strength. The results revealed volcanic ash to have (1) a high strength end-member at low alteration stages due to particle roughness and angularity and (2) a low strength end-member after complete diagenetic alteration, both under static conditions. This would suggest that strongly altered volcanic ash layers could potentially be responsible for slope failures. However, a review of ODP and IODP Expedition reports shows that advanced ash alteration mostly occurs at depths below (>800 mbsf) those commonly observed for slope failure initiation (<400 mbsf). This, in turn, suggests that volcanic ash alteration does not play an important role in the initiation of slope failure.

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Acknowledgements

All data are available by contacting the first author. We are grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn, Germany) for funding MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences. Vulkatec GmbH is acknowledged for providing various pumice sands. Matthias Lange and Christian Zöllner are thanked for technical assistance with the direct shear apparatuses at the MARUM Marine Geotechnics laboratory. S. Lafuerza is gratefully thanked for providing the GS sample material from IODP Expedition 340. Assessments by J.S. Laberg and an anonymous reviewer proved useful in improving the article.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, Bremen, 28203, Germany

    Gauvain Wiemer & Achim Kopf

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  1. Gauvain Wiemer
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Correspondence to Gauvain Wiemer.

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Wiemer, G., Kopf, A. Altered marine tephra deposits as potential slope failure planes?. Geo-Mar Lett 35, 305–314 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-015-0408-4

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