Effect of prior small to moderate seismic events on monotonic undrained shear strength of sand

Landslides in the Upper Submarine Slopes of Volcanic Islands: The Central Azores

“…ten Brink et al (2016) suggested that slopes become more stable with decreasing sedimentation rate and increasing frequency of earthquakes. Such increased sediment shear strength arises due to seismic shaking, causing shear-induced compaction (e.g., Sawyer & DeVore, 2015;ten Brink et al, 2016) or sediment internal structure changes (Wu et al, 2021). This may help to explain the comparatively high 9-33 kPa estimated cohesion of these Azorean sediments besides carbonate cementation and prompts us to ask if earthquakes may explain other aspects of the landslides data also.…”