Abstract
Lahars on volcanic terrain are recurrent phenomena with a high capacity to transform landscape and cause significant economic and life losses. Lahars have been studied in most volcanic regions, mostly based on the recognition of cotemporaneous events. Yet, there is a lack of long-term record about their frequency and magnitude. Such long-term records could help to improve lahar risk assessment and understand climate triggering factors. Here, we aim at providing the longest annual resolved frequency-magnitude lahar records of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. We focus on the Jamapa Gorge of the Pico de Orizaba volcano and apply geomorphological and dendrogeomorphological methodological approaches. Besides, we used a 2D numerical model to estimate the discharge of the reconstructed lahars based on the paleostage indicators (PSIs) defined by scars on trees. A total of 78 Pinus hartwegii trees were sampled for the reconstruction of lahars. We identified 157 growth disturbances related to past lahar activity, namely scars (51%), growth suppression (35%), and compression wood (32%). A total of 8 lahars were reconstructed between 1930 and 2017 (1931, 1960, 1968, 1975, 1999, 2012, 2014, and 2016) with a reconstructed peak discharge ranging between 80 and 350 m3/s. Largest events occurred in 1975 and 2012 with lahar discharges of 160 m3/s and 91 m3/s, respectively. Lahar events were linked to intense rainfall events and the passage of hurricanes and tropical storms coming from the Atlantic Ocean. These results highlight the benefit of the combined use of dendrogeomorphology and numerical modeling to gather longer series of lahar activity in volcanoes, where such information is largely lacking. The methodological approach deployed here can be applied consistently and uniformly in other volcanic regions to characterize lahar hazard, regardless of physiographic and climatic contexts.
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The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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We acknowledge Andrés Prado, Salvador Ponce, Mireya Vazquez, and Alejandra Franco for their support during fieldwork.
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This work was funded by UNAM DGAPA-PAPIIT project IA100619.
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Figueroa-García, J.E., Franco-Ramos, O., Bodoque, J.M. et al. Long-term lahar reconstruction in Jamapa Gorge, Pico de Orizaba (Mexico) based on botanical evidence and numerical modelling. Landslides 18, 3381–3392 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01716-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01716-3