Morfogénesis erosiva del relieve en Gran Canaria (Islas Canarias)

Zusammenfassung

The evolution of the relief of a volcanic island is the result of the succession of magmatic and erosional stages. The range and frequency of these cycles determines the morphogenesis and landscape evolution. A long history of alternating stages favours the generation of a wide variety of reliefs that overlap in a small area, making it difficult to assess the morphogenetic effects of the erosional processes during periods of relative eruptive inactivity. That is the case in Gran Canaria, an island with at least four different stages of volcanic activity separated by erosional periods ranging between 4 Ma and 40 ka. The aim of this work is to quantitatively assess the importance of the erosional processes during the evolution of the Gran Canaria relief by means of a morphometric analysis of the erosion surfaces and morphostructural scarps related to each volcanic stage. Among others, the results obtained include: the cartographic reconstruction of the successive palaeotopography identified for the island during each stage, the relative sequence of geomorphic processes and the morphogenetic model that would explain the relief evolution and the current result.