The EVoLvE toolkit: a set of methods for systematic quantification of volcano morphometry and their temporal evolution

Volcanoes display a wide range of morphologies, resulting from the cumulative imprints of deposition from multiple eruptive events and processes, deformation by intrusive and gravitational processes, as well as erosion throughout the active volcanic phase and beyond. Quantitative documentation of the morphometry of volcanoes offers opportunities to compare volcanic edifices across tectonic regions, define evolutionary trends for volcanoes of different ages and/or stage, or compare natural volcanoes with results from analogue or numerical modelling. Although such morphometric studies exist, the comparability of their results faces challenges related to the contrasted approaches used for delineating volcanic edifices, defining morphometric metrics to characterize volcano sizes, shapes, and erosion patterns, and deriving the pre-erosional volcano volume.

Building upon the MORVOLC (Grosse et al. 2012) and ShapeVolc (Lahitte et al. 2012) algorithms, the EVoLvE project has produced a suite of scripts in MatLab to semi-automatically document the morphometry of stratovolcanoes systematically. First, the manual delineation of a volcano’s base is aided by implementing a slope threshold (suggested to be at 3°) after applying a 300m low-pass filter on the volcano’s topography to identify the prominent volcano landform. Morphometric parameters documenting volcano-scale size, plan-shape, profile shape and slope, as well as metrics derived at regular elevation intervals, following the MORVOLC approach of Grosse et al. (2012), are complemented with a new set of parameters (DrainageVolc) that document the erosion pattern of volcanoes, specifically the drainage density and the geometry of drainage basins. Finally, assuming basins’ divides or local quasi planar surfaces represent the least eroded sections of an edifice, a surface fitting algorithm (ShapeVolc, Lahitte et al. 2012) is used to find the best approximate pre-erosional shape of the volcano,  making it possible to compute its erupted and eroded volumes, and dismantling and degradation rates.

In this contribution, we illustrate how the EVoLvE toolkit can be used to systematically document the morphometry of stratovolcanoes across volcanic arcs, and with contrasted ages to highlight morphological evolution through time. The toolkit can as well be used to compare the morphometry of natural volcanoes with those of synthetic volcanic cones whose erosion is simulated through analogue experiments and numerical landscape evolution models. The Matlab codes of the EVoLvE toolkit are open-source: they aim to contribute to homogenizing the morphometric datasets for volcanoes around the world as a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the morphological evolution of volcanoes.

 

References:

Grosse, P., van Wyk de Vries, B., Euillades, P. A., Kervyn, M. & Petrinovic, I. A. 2012: Systematic morphometric characterization of volcanic edifices using digital elevation models. Geomorphology 136, 114-131.

Lahitte, P., Samper, A. & Quidelleur, X. 2012: DEM-based reconstruction of southern Basse-Terre volcanoes (Guadeloupe archipelago, FWI): Contribution to the Lesser Antilles Arc construction rates and magma production. Geomorphology, 136, 148-164.