The tsunami effects of a volcanic island flank collapse on a semi-enclosed basin: The Pico-São Jorge channel in the Azores archipelago

Abstract:

The Azores archipelago is a set of nine volcanic islands in the middle of the North Atlantic, close to the triple junction between the North American, Eurasian and African plates. Due to their location, the islands are seismic and volcanically active, which makes them especially vulnerable to these types of hazards that could eventually trigger flank collapses, capable of generating destructive tsunamis. However, solid evidence of large-scale flank collapses has only been found recently in Pico Island (Costa et al., 2014; Quartau et al., 2015). This study investigates for the first time the tsunami effects of a flank collapse of the northeastern subaerial slope of Pico Island that occurred more than 70 ka ago. We first reconstructed the pre-event sub-aerial morphology of the island, and then numerically model the flank failure involving an estimated volume of ~8 km³, its flow toward and under the sea of ~14 km, and the subsequent tsunami generation and propagation. The modelling suggests that the collapse of Pico created a mega-tsunami that significantly impacted the coast of adjacent São Jorge Island only after 7 minutes after generation, with wave run-up reaching a maximum of 50 m at some coastlines. Most of the tsunami energy became trapped in the semi-enclosed basin between Pico and São Jorge Islands, with only relatively little energy escaping to neighboring islands.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 603839 (Project ASTARTE - Assessment, Strategy and Risk Reduction for Tsunamis in Europe)" for its major contribution for the success of this study. Publication supported by project FCT UID/GEO/50019/2013 - Instituto Dom Luiz.