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VolcPack: an all-in-one package for volcano morphology delineation, analysis, and reconstruction

Daniel O'Hara1,2, Roos M.J. van Wees2, Emma Hadre3, Pablo Grosse4,5, Pierre Lahitte6, Loraine Gourbet1, DelWayne Bohnenstiehl7, Matthieu Kervyn 2

  • Affiliations:  1 Earth Surface Process Modelling, GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany; 2 Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; 3 Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany; 4 Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina; 5 Fundación Miguel Lillo, Tucumán, Argentina; 6 GEOPS, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France; 7 Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, US

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Tuesday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 177

  • Programme No: 3.5.36

  • Theme 3 > Session 5

Abstract

Adequately cataloging volcanic landforms and their morphologies remains a continuously-progressing research area that is essential to understand volcano evolution, connection to underlying magmatism, and hazards. With the advent of high-resolution, easily-accessible topographic data, quantitative computational analysis has become an essential component for volcanology, allowing hundreds of volcanic features to be systematically analyzed. Various researchers have generated semi-automated programs for the delineation, morphometric analysis, and reconstruction of volcanic edifices from Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). However, these tools are often stand-alone algorithms made to accomplish one task, have inconsistent coding architectures, and are written in different programming languages. Developing a single, consistent, and standardized toolkit is an important step towards more comparable and systematic analysis of volcanic landforms. Here, we introduce VolcPack, a set of Matlab scripts for automated and user-friendly analysis of volcanic edifice morphologies. Built off of TopoToolbox, VolcPack integrates previous algorithms and introduces new components into a single, standardized package. These scripts contain four main components: 1) BoundVolc, used to identify and delineate volcanic edifices from surrounding topography through the generation of radial profiles that determine edifice boundaries; 2) MorVolc, which computes edifice morphometric parameters, including volumes; 3) DrainageVolc, designed to quantify edifice drainage basin, channel, and divide morphometrics; and 4) ShapeVolc, used to derive topographic reconstructions and eroded volumes of volcanic edifices by fitting mathematical functions to the least eroded sections of edifice flanks. In this contribution, we illustrate the capability and versatility of VolcPack for streamlined volcanic terrain analysis using examples of different types of volcanoes.