The remains of the largest known volcanic landslide in the entire Mediterranean, with a volume of up to 125 cubic kilometers, discovered by foreign and Greek scientists in the sea area of Santorini. Researchers estimate that the landslide occurred about 700,000 years ago, that is, during the early evolution of the island.
The island of Santorini is a popular tourist destination that attracts millions of people every year. However, few tourists realize that the island owes its current special morphology to the volcanic eruption that took place during the Minoan era, about 3,600 years ago. This eruption is considered one of the largest in the last 12,000 years worldwide and probably had a significant impact on the decline of the Minoan civilization.
In the history of Santorini there have been repeated large explosions, caldera collapses or the formation of extensive lava formations. This geological history is recorded on the walls of the caldera and has been the subject of many studies.
However, significant landslides on the island, in which large amounts of sediment and rocks slide into the sea and can cause large tsunamis, have been almost unknown until now. Traces of such great events have been discovered in many other volcanoes, for example in the Canary Islands or the Lesser Antilles.
The new study published in the international journal of geosciences “Basin Research”, by a team led by Jonas Preine from the German Institute of Geophysics at the Center for Earth Systems and Sustainability Research at the University of Hamburg (and Professor C. Hübscher), in collaboration with researchers from the German research center GEOMAR Karstens, GJ Crutchley and F. Schmid), the French University of Clermont Auvergne (Professor T. Druitt) and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Associate Professor Paraskevi Nomikos), were able to detect traces of a giant landslide caused by the land. The researchers detected extremely complex forms of deposition, which led them to conclude that a sequence of different landslide events must have occurred at that time.
The scientists also located a phase of very strong tectonic activity, the so-called “tectonic pulse”, along a zone of cortical weakness that stretches from Santorini to Amorgos and acted as a trigger for the next geological phenomena. As a result, there were collapses in Santorini and the Christian islands southwest of Santorini, which in turn led to secondary landslides, which were eventually deposited far away in the neighboring sedimentary basins.
As a result of these events, the volcanism around Santorini changed significantly and many volcanoes formed along a linear volcanic zone southwest to northeast of Santorini, which included the formation of the Peristera volcano, the lava of which is still visible in the north. side of Santorini.
The new study demonstrates a link between tectonic movements, landslides and volcanism and suggests small feedbacks from these processes. As Ms. Nomikou told the Athenian and Macedonian News Agency (APE-MPE), “such procedures have hardly been studied so far, but are very important to help improve future geo-risk assessments in this Aegean region.” However, they will be studied during the underwater research drilling at the end of 2022 by the research ship RV JOIDES Resolution in the caldera of Santorini and around the island by the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) “.
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