Sedimentary and volcanic tablelands host the world's largest landslide areas, sometimes spanning hundreds of kilometers along escarpments. This study, employing new remote sensing-based mapping and drawing on an expanding body of literature on paleogeographic evolution, revises the extent, controls, and chronology of some of Earth's largest coalescent landslides in the volcanic tableland of extra-Andean Patagonia. Mostly ancient rotational slides and rock spreads, accompanied by earthflows and occasional rock avalanches, cover approximately 30,000 km2, roughly a fifth of the Patagonian escarpments, with the largest landslide areas exceeding 1000 km2. The immense size of the failed tableland in Patagonia is inherited from stratigraphy and geological history: weak marine and continental Cretaceous-Miocene sedimentary and volcaniclastic rocks, capped by plateau basalts, create a highly unstable environment, outcropping along thousands of kilometers of escarpments. Most landslide areas occupy the steepest, most dissected parts of Patagonian tableland, occurring independently of recent climatic conditions. Some of the largest complexes are found in both the most humid and arid regions. Cross-cutting relationships between landslides and dated glacial, lacustrine, marine deposits, and lava flows reveal that some landslides have persisted for several million years, marking them as some of Earth's oldest landslide terrains with distinctive geomorphological footprints. Future research on failed Patagonian tableland should include direct radiometric dating, InSAR technology monitoring, and numerical stability modeling of landslides. This comprehensive approach will deepen our understanding of their origins and determine whether these giant landslide fringes predominantly represent fossil features or could be reactivated under contemporary environmental conditions.

中文翻译：

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边缘巴塔哥尼亚高原：地球上最大和最古老的滑坡地形之一


沉积和火山高地拥有世界上最大的滑坡区，有时沿着悬崖跨越数百公里。这项研究采用新的基于遥感的制图技术，并借鉴了有关古地理进化的大量文献，修改了安第斯山脉外巴塔哥尼亚火山台地中一些地球上最大的合并滑坡的范围、控制和年表。大部分是古老的旋转滑坡和岩石蔓延，伴有土流和偶尔的岩石雪崩，覆盖面积约为 30,000 km2，大约是巴塔哥尼亚悬崖的五分之一，最大的滑坡面积超过 1000 km2。巴塔哥尼亚崩塌高原的巨大面积继承自地层学和地质历史：薄弱的海洋和大陆白垩纪-中新世沉积岩和火山碎屑岩，被高原玄武岩覆盖，形成了一个高度不稳定的环境，沿着数千公里的悬崖露头。大多数滑坡区域占据了巴塔哥尼亚高地最陡峭、最分裂的部分，与最近的气候条件无关。一些最大的复合体位于最潮湿和最干旱的地区。滑坡与测年冰川、湖泊、海洋沉积物和熔岩流之间的横切关系表明，一些滑坡已经持续了数百万年，这使它们成为地球上最古老的滑坡地形之一，具有独特的地貌足迹。未来对巴塔哥尼亚高原崩塌的研究应包括直接辐射测年、InSAR 技术监测和滑坡数值稳定性建模。 这种全面的方法将加深我们对它们起源的理解，并确定这些巨大的滑坡边缘是主要代表化石特征，还是在当代环境条件下可以重新激活。