Role of coseismic bedrock landslides in the landscape evolution of high-relief mountainous terrain: Insights from detrital 10Be dilution modeling

Abstract

Episodic landslides supply vast quantities of debris from hillslopes to channels, resulting in the dilution of cosmogenic nuclides in fluvial sediment. This study revisited the nuclide dilution concept and proposed a novel model framework to quantify landslide-derived sediment yields to interpret the responses of entire landscape systems to tectonic forcing in an active orogen. The model was applied to datasets of detrital ¹⁰Be concentrations obtained from the Minjiang catchment in the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, where the impacts of coseismic landslides were documented during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Presumable model parameters were evaluated through multifaceted geospatial analyses by adopting the normalized channel steepness index as a proxy for background denudation rate, which was then converted to the corresponding nuclide concentration; the fluvial channel geometry was adopted for evaluating pre-event fluvial sediment storage. The scaling factors for quantifying the landslide debris influx were obtained via inversion of the diluted ¹⁰Be concentrations and corresponding landslide inventory to verify the feasibility of the model. The calibrated model was then applied at the regional scale to evaluate the long-term net denudation of the hillslopes with a certain earthquake recurrence interval. The resulting spatial distribution of increased denudation is consistent with very-long-term exhumation rates derived from low-temperature thermochronology, implying the critical role of coseismic landslides in mass removal from hillslopes to counterbalance long-term tectonic uplift.