| Project Detail |
"The MECOMA project aims to significantly improve hazard assessment of monogenetic volcanic fields (VF) by creating synergies between recent advances in landscape evolution modelling and the current understanding of scoria cones volcanic structure and evolution. Assessing hazards from VF is more challenging than that of polygenetic volcanoes, as it requires understanding the spatiotemporal distribution of eruptions within the VF. Constraining temporal information is specifically challenging: radiometric dating of scoria cones (SC) provides, until now, the most ""accurate"" estimate of the date of their eruption, but it cannot be systematically applied to the hundreds or even thousands of SC within each of the many VF on Earth.
Morphometry-based dating of SC provides an alternative. Research has shown that following the cones emplacement, the volcanic edifices morphology changes due to erosive processes. Parameters measuring the decrease of slope angle, the degree of gully incision, and cone irregularity are key indicators of erosion that can be quantified from Digital Terrain Models (DTM). However, some questions still need to be answered to use morphometric indicators as age estimators, such as the control of SC size and climate conditions on the time evolution of morphometric indicators or the trade-offs between diffusive and advective erosion processes.
MECOMA project seeks answers to those questions by implementing numerical models to simulate erosion on cones under controlled erosive conditions and linking the results with an analysis of the morphologies of radiometrically-dated scoria cones from different VF exposed to various climatic conditions. As an outcome, I expect to provide tools and clear guidelines that contribute to implementing morphometry-based dating techniques in VF worldwide and, through my training at VUB, gain experience managing research projects and expertise in landscape evolution modelling and volcanic geomorphology." |
