Did you know that landslides can happen on the ocean floor? Underwater landslides can be huge- as big as South Carolina and can cause tsunamis! These underwater landslides occur past the beach and on the continental slope, which is the ramp that leads into the deep ocean. These mass movements can be triggered by storm waves, earthquakes, and weak layers in the marine mud on the slope. 

Since earthquakes cause underwater landslides, intuitively you might think there would be more landslides where there are more earthquakes. However, previous research shows that this is not the case, and the mud where earthquakes happen is stronger, which prevents landslides from occurring. 

My research focuses on studying ocean mud on the continental slope, where landslides occur, to try and figure out why the places where there are more earthquakes have fewer underwater landslides and why the mud at these places is stronger. This means the earthquakes could be the reason some muds are stronger and help prevent underwater landslides.  

Conceptually this is known as seismic strengthening. There is still a lot more research that I and other scientists have to do to prove this concept, but understanding seismic strengthening will be extremely useful for protecting the infrastructure that we have on the sea floor (such as our internet cables) and also for furthering our understanding of coastal hazards that can be caused by underwater landslides (such as tsunamis).