Samantha Clarke, BSc (Hons)

PhD Candidate

Madsen Building (F09), Room 438
Phone: +61 2 9351 2056
Fax: +61 2 951 3644
Email:

Supervisor
Dr Thomas Hubble

Associate Supervisor
Associate Professor David Airey

Research

PhD title: Late Quaternary and Holocene Submarine Slides On the Upper East Australian Continental Margin

Samantha Clarke is a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney studying marine geology and geomechanics. Samantha’s research interests include submarine landslides and the processes by which they occur. She is currently investigating a region of Australia’s south-eastern continental margin in order to gain a better understanding of newly identified submarine landslides present in this region.

Project Summary
Over the last few years, awareness of tsunamis has increased within our society, especially given the recent tsunamis on several coastal regions around the world (e.g. the 2004 Sumatra Indian Ocean tsunami and the September 2009 Samoan events). Tsunamis of this kind are being increasingly linked to the occurrence of submarine landslides around the world and in spite of this, there have been no comprehensive investigations into the prevalence of underwater landslides on the Australian continental margin. Similarly, neither the causal processes nor the tsunamogenic potential of submarine slope failures in the Australian region have been determined – despite the fact that many enormous slope failures are present on the eastern Australian margin.

This PhD thesis will focus on documenting the stratigraphy and depositional characteristics of the sediments recovered in cores from a recent research cruise and will also determine the geotechnical properties of the recent sediment drape and the older sub-slide sediments. This data will then be used in conjunction with landslide geometry and morphology information to evaluate the mechanism of failure of these submarine landslides. It is expected that geotechnical analyses constrained by this information will indicate which of several possible mechanisms is more likely to have been responsible for causing these slope failures.

Ultimately, the results from this project will generate an exciting new understanding of the marine geology of the southeast coast of Australia, its character and evolution, while at the same time helping to mitigate and manage potential dangers associated with these submarine landslides.