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How to deal with a long recurrence rate volcanic hazard of dispersed volcanic fields with high geoheritage values? Geohazard in a geoheritage context

Károly Németh 1,2, Mostafa Toni 1,3, Vladimir Sokolov 1, Abdulrahman Sowaigh 1, Mahmoud Ashor 1

  • Affiliations:  1 Geohazard Center, Saudi Geological Survey, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2 HUN-REN FluidByDepth Lendület Research Group, Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science, Sopron, Hungary, 3 Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt 

  • Presentation type: Poster

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

  • Poster Board Number: 98

  • Programme No: 7.2.10

  • Theme 7 > Session 2

Abstract

Western Saudi Arabia has one of the largest monogenetic volcanic provinces on Earth (~3500 volcanoes since the Pleistocene in 19 fields). The youngest eruption occurred in the, now rapidly growing, Madinah City in 1256-CE, but Holocene eruptions are also suspected elsewhere. Earthquake swarms accompany the magma flows beneath the volcanic fields. These regions are dispersed fields with low number of age data to define recurrence rate hence probabilistic eruption forecasting has high uncertainty beyond the expected time scale of decades for modern developments. The region has significant volcanic geodiversity. Communicating volcanic hazard while growing temptation to exploit the geoheritage for tourism is difficult. A project by the Red Sea Global, a major development company of Saudi Arabia, at the Quaternary Lunayyir Volcanic Field (~700 vents from ~150 edifices over ~600-ka) faced with a complex problem how to deal with high uncertainty of complex volcanic-seismic hazard to protect future development sites and visitors but also to be able to utilize the benefit of the high value geoheritage and keeping it preserved under conservation strategies. The Saudi Geological Survey and the Red Sea Global co-developing a strategy where volcano-seismic hazard estimation is combined with the geodiversity calculation, geosite recognitions within a sustainable geoconservation for tourism purpose and geoeducation. In this approach volcano-seismic hazard mapping is impacted by geoheritage mapping by characterising their values to provide data for decision-makers to outline management scenarios and communication strategies alongside with co-shared hazard and heritage mitigation strategies for development sites on active monogenetic volcanic fields.