One Million Years of Climatic Generated Landslide Events on the Northwestern Barents Sea Continental Margin

Relatively recent, shallow landslides are imaged both on swath bathymetry, sub-bottom and multichannel seismic reflection (MCS) data from the upper-middle continental slope on the Storfjorden and Kveithola Trough Mouth Fans, NW Barents Sea margin. Giant paleo-landslide deposits, detected only by MCS profiles, are characterized by chaotic acoustic units up to about 250 m thick on the lower continental slope. The thickest, oldest landslide, dated between 1 and 0.8 Ma, took place just after the large-scale intensification of glaciation in the Barents Sea. The apparent spatial coincidence of landslides and channels with the boundary between the two fan systems, that are generated due to huge quantities of sediments transported to the continental slope by paleo-ice streams, suggests a common controlling climatic process for their development. Most probably the slides are related to the abundance of basal meltwater beneath the ice sheet, which in addition to determining ice stream motion and lubrication also influences the behavior of mass wasting processes.