Simulación de la degradación por erosión que se observa en los conos de escoria

Abstract

The volcanic cones known as cinder cones but better described as scoria cones, usually appear in swarms forming volcano fields. They are the smallest type of volcanoes which once unaclive start being degraded by erosion, if we do not consider those that can be buried by material ejected from later nearby cones. The process of degradation is relatively fast at the beginning and gradually loses power, but does not stop until the cone is completely leveled and erased from the landscape. A computer model was applied to simulate the degradation of scoria cones. The model requires as input data the coordinates of specific points that define the central profile of a young cone. The erosion algorithm through which the simulation is done consists of a filtering process applied repitedly to obtain a sequence of profiles corresponding to successive stages in erosion.