Late Quaternary paleolandslides on the coral terraces of Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Many landslides disrupt the coral terraces at northeast Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea. Each landslide is younger than the youngest terrace which it intersects and is older than the oldest coral reef or shoreline that overlies it. The ages of the raised coral reefs and terraces were established by previous studies using radiocarbon and uranium-series dating. The times of occurrence of 26 late Quaternary landslides are reported here; 7 are based on new radiocarbon dates from in situ corals or molluscs associated with landslide deposits, and the remainder are based on terrace ages that were established previously. The landslides include slumps, block slides and block flows which mostly involve failure of coral limestones of the terraces, and debris flows which originate from large landslides that cut through the coral limestones into underlying fan-delta and tuffaceous sedimentary rocks. The proportion of terrace area affected by Late Quaternary landslides ranges from < 1% to > 50% per km2 and depends on average gradient of the landsurface, tectonic uplift rate, and the thickness and geometry of the raised reefs and terraces. Clusters of landslides, which occurred at about 800–1250 and 6300–7800 yr BP, may have been triggered by large earthquakes which also caused metre-scale coseismic uplift. However, we did not identify landslides that could have been associated with every large coseimic uplift that has been documented in this region.