Indexed in

License and use

Citations

Cited 8 times in

Cited 6 times in

Altmetrics

Grant support

This research is part of the project CGL2017-86241-R. Our thanks to TenerifeWater Council (Consejo Insular de Aguas de Tenerife) for providing data on waterworks and access to unpublished datasheets and reports. This work would not have been possible without the help of the private water societies or Comunidades de Aguas, owners of the various water galleries surveyed. They kindly allowed us to visit the galeries and tunnels and provided not only technical and logistic assistance, but also access to their own hydrogeological reports. Finally, we are grateful for the comments and suggestions of the editor (J.L. Macias) and the two reviewers (G. Boudon and an anonymous reviewer), which greatly improved this paper.

Analysis of institutional authors

Share

Multiple related flank collapses on volcanic oceanic islands: Evidence from the debris avalanche deposits in the Orotava Valley water galleries (Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Publicated to:Journal Of Volcanology And Geothermal Research. 401 (106980): 106980- - 2020-09-01 401(106980), DOI: 10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2020.106980

Authors: Coello-Bravo, JJ; Márquez, A; Herrera, R; Huertas, MJ; Ancochea, E

Affiliations

Abstract

Catastrophic flank collapses are common on oceanic islands of volcanic origin and often recognizable from the resulting morphology as large U-shaped embayments. However, post-collapse volcanic activity can infill such features, thereby obscuring them. This study takes advantage of a dense network of long sub-horizontal galleries for groundwater extraction in the flank collapse structure of the Orotava Valley (Tenerife, Canary Islands). This impressive landform is located in the overlapping zone of the NE Rift and the Canadas Edifice of this volcanic island. Three debris avalanche deposits (DADs) have been identified inside the waterworks bored into the valley's western sector. The deeper layer, the Lower-DAD (L-DAD) was previously described under the local name of manakin. This deposit lies unconformably over older volcanic rocks, where a prominent shear-zone is developed, here interpreted as the detachment plane of a massive rockslide. The L-DAD was therefore produced during the large failure event, the Orotava Landslide (OL), which carved the depression. Two younger DADs, much smaller in volume and not previously described, were also identified in the underground strata: the Intermediate- (I-DAD) and Upper-DAD (U-DAD). Both correlate well with the thick brecda deposits cropping out at the base of the marine cliff along the western coast of the valley. The I-DAD and U-DAD are conformably intercalated between the lava flows and other volcanics infilling the depression, and their bases are erosive/depositional features without structural deformation zones below them. Their stratigraphic setting and geometrical reconstruction indicate that both deposits were emplaced after the valley was formed by the OL event, in two successive failures here called Western Orotava Landslides (WOLs). The younger, called WOL-2, was dated at 494 +/- 22 ka using the Ar-40/Ar-39 method. These two subaerial failures affected the upper eastern flank of the Catiadas III Edifice, previously destabilized when the OL failure event carved a steep wall at its foot, the western lateral escarpment of the Orotava Valley. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords