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Geo-structures and deformation-failure characteristics of rockslide areas near the Baige landslide scar in the Jinsha River tectonic suture zone

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Abstract

After two successive Baige landslides in the Jinsha River tectonic suture zone, a landslide scar with three steep free surfaces has been exposed in the source area, where three concomitant sliding blocks (K1, K2, and K3) have been identified as continuously moving at high rates, suggesting further potential failures within these areas. This study focused on structural geology and conducted a comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis to understand the active features and geological evolution models for these sliding blocks. Results showed that the three rockslides can be further subdivided into eleven subdomains. The revealed rock masses are likely to be affected by faults, fracture zones, and folds, and are featured by widely distributed and variable interbedded lithology with heterogeneous qualities combined with fragmentation, brecciation, and mylonitization. The movements are gradually increasing, especially encountering rainfall, and are ascribed to the dramatic unloading resulting from sudden large-scale detachments during the successive landslides and subsequent progressive time-dependent strength degradation of the rock masses. The active features and geological evolution models vary for the different subdomains and are intensely associated with daylighting geo-structures. Serpentinite predominates K1-4 and K1-5, showing brittle fracturing after a certain degree of accumulative deterioration is surpassed, highly weathered carbonaceous slate predominates K2-1 accompanied by “back-pushing” of en masse slide, and better rock mass integrity causes K1-3 to exhibit “fore-pulling” of retrogressive superficial collapse.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1505404), the project from China Geological Survey (DD20190637), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41907225), and the program of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (2021YJ0033). An editor and two reviewers provided further constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, China

    Shi-lin Zhang, Xie-wen Hu & Gang Luo

  2. Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring, Geological Survey, Beijing, 10081, China

    Yue-ping Yin, Wen-pei Wang & Sai-nan Zhu

  3. Center of China Geological Survey, Chengdu, 610081, China

    Zong-liang Li

  4. No.915 Geological Team, Sichuan Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, Meishan, 620020, China

    Xin-ming Wu

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  1. Shi-lin Zhang
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Correspondence to Yue-ping Yin or Wen-pei Wang.

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Zhang, Sl., Yin, Yp., Hu, Xw. et al. Geo-structures and deformation-failure characteristics of rockslide areas near the Baige landslide scar in the Jinsha River tectonic suture zone. Landslides 18, 3577–3597 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01741-2

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