The Barranco de Tirajana basin, Gran Canaria (Spain). A major erosive landform caused by large landslides

Abstract

The Barranco de Tirajana (BdT), located on the island of Gran Canaria (Spain), has some specific features that differentiate it from the ravines of other volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The origin of this unusually wide upper basin (35 km2) has been under discussion over the last century although its erosional origin is nowadays widely accepted. The purpose of this paper is to describe the landslide deposits that appear at the bottom of the basin and to assess their role in the geomorphological evolution of the basin. We suggest that the BdT basin is a major erosional landform initiated by important ravine incision and widened by a large number of landslides. There are 28 large landslides within the BdT basin. The main movements were of rock-slide and debris-slide types, affecting 70% and 25% of the total area, respectively. In addition, modes of displacement were predominantly translational (rock-, debris-, and earth-slides) consisting of 89% of the total, compared to rotations and flows that constitute only 11%. Three main periods of landslide activity have been established in the development of the BdT basin, using geomorphological criteria. Period I includes ancient movements that could have started at about 0.6 Ma or even 2.7 Ma ago and are considered as abandoned landslides. Period II corresponds to old landslides considered as dormant, which occurred within the Middle-Upper Pleistocene. Finally, period III includes recent Upper Pleistocene landslides and Holocene landslides that are still active. We suggest that interglacials in the Canary Islands and NW Africa included humid and wet episodes that could account for the occurrence of periods of landslide activity in the BdT basin.