Megalandslides in the upper Salado River basin, Cordillera Principal, Mendoza
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Abstract
In the last decades, the knowledge and amount of research related to the role of landslide events as dominant processes in the modeling of mountain landscapes has increased. In the upper basin of the Salado river in Mendoza, landslides deposits of various types have been identified for the first time, whose genesis is the main object of this work. From the historical reconstruction of the geomorphology of the valleys and the geological context, a series of conditioning factors and triggers were proposed that would have facilitated the concentrated occurrence of these phenomena in the study area. The lack of glacial deposits in the Salado river valley below 3000 mbsl, allowed us to postulate that it was not the relaxation of post-glacial slopes that led to the mass wasting events of rockslide and rock avalanche, but geological factors related to structures and lithology of the exposed units. Recently, new publications also consider these geological factors as essential determinants of large mass movements in nearby areas, also associated with the outcrops of the Main Cordillera in the folded and rift belt of Malargüe. For the present work, an inventory of all the gravitational processes present was made, characterized at different spatial scales, and subsequently, classified according to different criteria. Additionally, the internal structure of the rock avalanche profile exposed at the side of Provincial Route 222, was described in detail, which was interpreted and divided into lithocynematic facies according to a studied model.
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