Abstract
Within a project aimed at understanding past catastrophic rock slope failure in the Trentino Province of Italy, we studied the Castelpietra landslide. Castelpietra encompasses a main blocky deposit, with an area of 1.2 km2, which is buried on the upper side by more recent rockfall debris. The release area is the Cengio Rosso rock wall, which is comprised of Dolomia Principale and overlying Calcari Grigi Group dolomitized limestones. 36Cl exposure dates from two boulders in the main blocky deposit indicate that the landslide occurred at 1060 ± 270 AD (950 ± 270 yr ago). The close coincidence in time of the Castelpietra event with several events that lie within a maximum distance of 20 km, including Kas at Marroche di Dro, Prà da Lago and Varini (at Lavini di Marco) landslides, strongly suggests a seismic trigger. Based on historical seismicity compilations, we have identified the “Middle Adige Earthquake” at 1046 AD as the most likely candidate. Its epicenter lies right in the middle of the spatial distribution of the discussed landslides.
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Acknowledgements
Funding from the Geological Survey of Trento Province and the University of Padova (Progetto di ricerca di Ateneo 2014, CPDA140511) allowed this research. We thank the Geological Survey of Trento Province for access to the DEM. The AMS group at Ion Beam Physics provided support of fieldwork, labwork, and AMS measurements.
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Ivy-Ochs, S. et al. (2017). Geomorphology and Age of Large Rock Avalanches in Trentino (Italy): Castelpietra
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In: Mikoš, M., Vilímek, V., Yin, Y., Sassa, K. (eds) Advancing Culture of Living with Landslides. WLF 2017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53483-1_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53483-1_41
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