Magnitude-frequency distribution of submarine landslides in the Gioia Basin (southern Tyrrhenian Sea)

Regional inventories and magnitude-frequency relationships provide critical information about landslides and represent a first step in landslide hazard assessment. Despite this, the availability of accurate inventories in the marine environment remains poor because of the commonly low accessibility of high-resolution data at regional scales. Evaluating high-resolution bathymetric data spanning the time interval 2007-2011 for the Gioa Basin of the southern Tyrrhenian Sea yielded a landslide inventory of 428 events affecting an area of >85 km(2) and mobilizing approximately 1.4 km(3) of sediment. This is the first time that this area is studied in such detail, justifying comparison with other areas both onland and offshore. Statistical analyses revealed that the cumulative distribution of the dataset is characterized by two right-skewed probability distributions with a heavy tail. Moreover, evidence of a rollover for smaller landslide volumes is consistent with similar trends reported in other settings worldwide. This may reflect an observational limitation and the site-specific geologic factors that influence landslide occurrence. The robust validation of both power-law and log-normal probability distributions enables the quantification of a range of probabilities for new extreme events far from the background landslide sizes defined in the area. This is a useful tool at regional scales, especially in geologically active areas where submarine landslides can occur frequently, such as the Gioia Basin.