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Estimating rates of debris flow entrainment from ground vibrations

Debris flows generate seismic waves as they travel downslope and can become more dangerous as they entrain sediment along their path. We present field observations that show a systematic relation between the magnitude of seismic waves and the amount of erodible sediment beneath the flow. Specifically, we observe that a debris flow traveling along a channel filled initially with sediment 0.34 m thick generates about 2 orders of magnitude less spectral power than a similar‐sized flow over the same channel without sediment fill. We adapt a model from fluvial seismology to explain this observation and then invert it to estimate the level of bed sediment (and rate of entrainment) beneath a passing series of surges. Our estimates compare favorably with previous direct measurements of entrainment rates at the site, suggesting the approach may be a new indirect way to obtain rare field constraints needed to test models of debris flow entrainment.