Geomorphology and geochronology of sackung features (uphill-facing scarps) in the Central Spanish Pyrenees

The paper analyses uphill-facing scarps and associated troughs developed in the oversteepened slopes of two neighbouring glacial valleys in the central Spanish Pyrenees. Previous studies of sackung landforms in the Pyrenees have argued for deglacial unloading as the genetic mechanism, but this causal and temporal relationship has not been proved due to the lack of chronological data. The antislope scarps in the two studied locations, Vallibierna and Estós, are developed in Palaeozoic metasedimentary rocks (parallel to the contour lines and the structural grain), occur in the intermediate sector of the hillslope, and are up to 0.5 km long and several meters high. A trench was excavated in a sackung trough fill in each of the valleys in order to gain information about their chronology and genesis. Charcoal from the lowermost unit in Vallibierna provided an age of 5.9 cal. ka for the sackung and extrapolation of the three dates obtained in Estós indicates that the trough formed ca. 7.6-7.8 cal. ka. Deglaciation of the studied sectors of the valleys occurred between 16 and 13 ka. The time lag of >5 ka suggests that glacial erosion and the subsequent debutressing of the oversteepened valley walls created slopes predisposed to sackung development, but did not initiate the movement. Seismic shaking is proposed as a probable triggering factor. This hypothesis, although supported by the sudden deformation event recorded by a failure plane exposed in Vallibierna trench, and by the seismic and neotectonic activity of the area, cannot be proved due to the lack of chronological information about paleoearthquakes.