XIII Congreso Peruano de Geología.

Resúmenes Extendidos
Sociedad Geológica del Perú

ACTIVE TECTONICS AS DETERMINANT FACTOR IN LANDSLIDES

ALONG THE WESTERN CORDILLERA?

Laurence Audin1 & Agathe Bechir2

1
IRD-LMTG, casilla 18-1209, Lima 18, Peru, laurence.audin@ird.fr
2
Master RIGISSC, Université de Montpellier II , UFR des Sciences
Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 MONTPELLIER Cedex 5

KEYWORDS: Erosion, mass transfer, landslides, active tectonics, Peru

INTRODUCTION

The building of an orogen is mostly characterized by surface uplift and the parallel evolution of
topography, leading to states in which tectonic is balanced by erosion. Mountain belts are narrow
zones of tectonic convergence in which crustal shortening is achieved, in some part, through vertical
uplift. In such regions, tectonic uplift is limited by denudation processes that redistribute mass down to
the lowlands. It has been recognized (Hermanns and Strecker, 1999; Hovius et al. 2000; Hermanns et
al., 2001) that in actively deforming areas, landslides often constitutes an important mechanism for
delivering material from hillslopes into valleys. In southern Peru in the forearc, watersheds appear to
initiate by gorge incision in the western cordillera and to expand by landsliding near the heads of the
canyons. Major landslides thus do contribute to the erosion and mass transfer of the southern Andes of
Peru toward the Central valley and then to the ocean along major canyons. We have mapped the
landslides along the western piedmont of the Central Andes together with the associated tectonic
features in the forearc of southern Peru because it could represent an outstanding example of such
erosion processes that contribute to the denudation of mountain fronts.

ANDEAN FOREARC INCISION

In the forearc of southern Peru, regularly spaced canyons drain the cordillera on the western side of the
Andes toward the Pacific lowlands. This southwest directed drainage is constituted by large rivers that
follow deeply incised canyons and valley floors are bedrock, mantled by discontinuous, coarse-grained
deposits.

Bedrock landslides in mountainous regions can occur without any external trigger mechanism (e.g.
the 1964 Nevado Huascaran landslide) but are often triggered by either storms or earthquakes (for
Peru, see Keefer et al., 2003). Thus due to the really dry climate (erosion rates >250 cm/My, Kober et
al., 2005) that last for the last 10Myrs, earthquake-triggered landslides or exceptional Nino events are
probably the most suitable hypothesis and in such an actively deforming orogen should increase the
supply of sediment to rivers (Eberhart-Phillips et al., 2003; Keefer et al., 2003). Thus, the sediment
yield from seismically active areas such as the forearc region in southern Peru, maybe partly
controlled by large earthquakes. After an earthquake, seismically weakened rock mass may be
removed from hillslopes by landslides (Keefer, 1984; Dadson et al, 2004; Keefer et al., 2003), and
coseismic landslide debris flushed from catchments such as major canyons. In southern Peru, some of
the landslide debris flows are often trapped inside the major canyons and redistributed downstream.
Major remnant deposits are still observed in Aplao canyon or in Laguna Aricota region and may mark
the occurrence of the last major event to be dated.

In order to determine the volume of erosion attributable to landsliding, the aerial extent of the
landslide measured on aerial photographs or satellite images has to be converted to a rock volume.
Previous studies in Japan (Ohmori, 1992) suggest a linear relationship between the length of the
displaced mass and its depth. Coseismic landslide volume is also known to correlate with earthquake
magnitude (Keefer, 1984), but patterns of landslide density around active faults and their location with

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Sociedad Geológica del Perú

respect to the river network are poorly constrained and may depend mainly on each case study
(Hermanns et al., 2001).

Several landslide scars of a length of ≥ 1 km with steep, rough surfaces are present in the Central
Andean forearc, such as in the Caravelli region as presented in Figue 1. Some scars reach down to
within a few tens of metres from the present-day channel bed, but none of the major rivers are
currently obstructed by landslide debris anywhere along the cordillera, excepted in Laguna Aricota
region where it is the direct origin of the lake (Placzek et al., 2001). We infer that other rivers may
have been blocked from geomorphic evidences such as lacustrine deposits (Tambo valley), major
terraces (Aplao valley). Small blockages, with a fill depth of a few tens of metres, may have occurred
more frequently but removal of the landslide dam(s) can cover various time periods and be either
quick or slow with respect to incision rate (Placzek et al., 2001; Hermanns et al., 2004)

Field, aerial-photograph, and satellite observations show major landslides, in the studied region that
extend arbitrarily from Lima to Tacna, but main ones are located south of Arequipa. We currently are
analyzing landslide distribution in relation to geologic structure, stratigraphy and topography.
Landslides were mapped from 15-m resolution ASTER satellite images and 1/50000 aerial
photography. This resolution means that 100m-scale landslides can be mapped accurately. Several
landslides were triggered in the Tertiary sedimentary or volcano clastic rocks from the Huayllilas
formation (See Caquilluco landslide). Generally the head of the landslides contain multiple scarps and
show a complex history.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Temporal variability of fluvial incision may have been caused by tectonic activity, sea level and/or
climate changes. However independent constraints exist on the uplift history of Central Andes, and
given that most of the uplift of the Andes has taken place relatively quickly in less than 4 Ma between
10.3 million and 6.7 million years ago (Garzione et al., 2006), we expect that the influence of active
faulting or slope oversteepening is probably one cause of subsequent gravitational collapses along the
western piedmont of the Andes. We aim in this work to estimate the erosion rate corresponding to
landsliding and compare it to long term denudation or average incision rate from Kober et al, 2005 in
northern Chile just next to our study area (and new data from Peru after Hall et al., submitted to
Tectonophysics) or estimate what is the amount of erosion taken in account by landslides in the
forearc in southern Peru.

Fig. 1. Examples of canyon’s head affected by landslides in Caravelli valley, red lines correspond to regional tectonic
features, white and black lines outline the landslides overall limits.

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