Short communication: Runout of rock avalanches limited by basal friction but controlled by fragmentation

Abstract

Rock avalanches produce exceptionally long run-outs that correlate with their rock volume. This relationship has been attributed to the size-dependent dynamic lowering of the effective basal friction. However, it has also been observed that run-outs of rock avalanches with similar volumes can span several orders of magnitude, suggesting additional controlling factors. Here, we analyse analogue models of rock avalanches, with the experiments designed to test the role of dynamic fragmentation. We show that for a fixed low basal friction, the run-out of experimental rock avalanches varies over 2 orders of magnitude and is determined by their degree of fragmentation, while the basal friction acts only as an upper limit on run-out. We interpret the run-out's dependence on fragmentation as being controlled by the competition between mobility enhancing spreading and energy-consuming fragmentation limited by basal friction. We formalize this competition into a scaling law based on energy conservation, which shows that the variation in the degree of fragmentation can contribute to the large variation in run-out of rock avalanches seen in nature.